


couplezoned

by veterization



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, [REDACTED] lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 00:44:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21226982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veterization/pseuds/veterization
Summary: In which Akihiko suddenly finds out that everybody is under the delusion that he and Shinjiro are a couple, and it slowly and carefully drives him crazy. He's just not sure why.





	couplezoned

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW. Friends, I started writing this story last fall, fully intending to finish it back then, and yet here I am, one year later. In my defense, life has gotten very hectic for me as of late, as it always seems to when I most want to just sit and write.
> 
> Anyway, many, MANY years ago, I had written a half-baked draft for a Shinjiro/Akihiko story that, at the time, was really just domestic fluff galore that acted as a personal band-aid for the inevitable tragedy that is Shinjiro and Akihiko's canon storyline (I never finished the story or even got anywhere with it because it was lacking literally EVERYTHING except for tooth-rotting mush). Then last fall, I revisited it and decided to spice it up a bit with a fun twist: what if everybody accidentally automatically assumed they were together? (Hence the title, a take on "friendzone" that I am inordinately pleased by).
> 
> The story follows canon except for the tiny bit where it veers off completely: mainly, SOMEBODY (hint, hint) makes it through alive, and now a few years later, Akihiko is in college, Shinjiro is working at the Beef Bowl restaurant, and they live together as one happy bunch with Ken and Koromaru. Those little facts were the part stolen straight out of my original fluff overdose fic, because ALL THOSE FOUR DESERVE LOVE AND COMPANY, thank you for coming to my TED talk, and goodnight.

Akihiko is most definitely late as he smacks his alarm clock off the table, sending it tumbling to the ground. A crunchy thud that can’t be good for the alarm’s well-being sounds in the air like an omen.

He shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night watching that movie just because Shinji persuaded him to. “Just five more minutes, Aki,” he had lied. “It’s almost over,” he had lied again. “C’mon, let’s just finish it.” The movie wasn’t even that good, just some overdone drama about a boxer on the hunt for love and success.

Akihiko resigns himself to waking up. The silver lining here is that he can smell the occasional waft of pancakes, which means Shinji is already awake preparing breakfast. He can hear the soft padding of Koromaru’s paws on the linoleum too, and the faint chatter of Ken talking a few rooms away. Looks like everyone’s up but him.

When he wrangles his alarm clock back up onto the bedside table, he sees he’s seriously late for class.

“Dammit,” he mutters, throwing the covers off himself.

He hurries to get dressed. The smell of the fresh pancakes is unfairly tempting. There’s no way he’ll make it to his nine o’clock class if he doesn’t hurry, and hurrying means grabbing anything portable he can eat during his commute, not taking a seat at the table and indulging in a hearty, fluffy meal. No matter how good that hearty, fluffy meal might be.

Shinji looks up from the stove as Akihiko walks in. Koromaru is sitting next to him, waiting patiently for a snack. “You look like shit.”

“I didn’t sleep long enough,” he grumbles by way of explanation. “And good morning to you too.”

“You had fun relaxing a bit last night, admit it,” Shinji says, refusing to apologize. “You need a movie night now and then too.”

Akihiko mumbles a little under his breath but refuses to argue about it. It’s too damn early. As a matter of fact, it’s a bit of an insult just to see Shinjiro already up and running and operating heavy machinery when Akihiko’s still scrubbing the sleep away from his eyelids.

“I gotta get to class,” he says, snatching his protein drink out of the fridge and heading for the door.

Shinjiro grabs him by the shoulder before he can go. “Wait,” he says, then turns around and hands him a packed paper sack. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Lunch,” he says, like it’s obvious.

Akihiko still isn’t convinced. He carefully examines the exterior of the sack. “Am I supposed to give this to Ken?”

“It’s for you, idiot,” Shinji says, huffing. “So I actually know you’ll eat real food today.”

Akihiko huffs too, taking care to be louder than Shinjiro. “I always eat real food,” he says hotly. “Besides, I’m meeting Mitsuru for dinner, remember? I’ll be well-fed.”

“Don’t count on it. You know she’ll probably take you somewhere so up-market that the portions are all bite-sized but somehow cost as much as a mortgage.”

“Don’t… be like that,” Akihiko says, even as he has to concede that Shinji might have a point. Last time Mitsuru invited him to a place in the city that specialized in _deconstructed dishes_ and he spent the night hungry and annoyed at post-modern monosyllabic menus.

He eyes the pancakes Shinji’s cooking on the stove. Damn.

“I have to go,” Akihiko says as he grabs his keys. That smell is going to follow him all the way out into the hallway. Tempting him.

It also distracts him enough that he nearly runs straight into Ken as he strolls his way into the kitchen. His limbs—which have gone especially gangly as of late since his latest growth spurt—knock bony elbows directly into Akihiko’s chest.

He has the feeling today isn’t going to be his best day ever.

\--

It isn’t until an artfully designed but excruciatingly small morsel of food is delicately put in front of Akihiko later that evening at dinner with Mitsuru that he realizes Shinjiro might’ve been right. So much for being properly fed tonight.

He sighs and tucks in his napkin. Classical music drones quietly on in the background.

“So what did you want to talk about?” he asks, downing the food in one clean bite. The plate is whisked away by a waiter seconds later only to be promptly replaced with the next course: a soup that seems to have been maneuvered into a shot glass.

“There’s a Kirijo banquet next month. I’d like for you to attend,” Mitsuru says.

“Sure,” Akihiko says. He isn’t crazy about those things, but he can suck it up. “I’m not giving any speeches, am I?”

“No,” she assures him.

“All right, then I’m in.”

Mitsuru nods, pleased. Akihiko’s done the whole song-and-dance at Kirijo events before. It’s a lather-rinse-repeat cycle of shaking hands and stoking the conversational fire of how reliable the Kirijo Group is under Mitsuru’s leadership. Akihiko doesn’t even need to stare at profit numbers or tax sheets to know that’s the case; there wasn’t a day in her life when Mitsuru wasn’t a born boss, only occasionally bordering on being a—to use Junpei’s phrase of choice—bossypants.

Mitsuru dabs at her mouth with a napkin. “Just so you know, I unfortunately wasn’t able to get you a plus-one.”

Akihiko shrugs. “Fine by me. Who would I have brought anyway?”

“Well, I assume Shinjiro would’ve liked to go.”

“Shinji hates that shit.” _I’m not big on it either_, he thinks but doesn’t say. After all, he can do worse than a scratchy suit and an open bar one night of the year. “Besides, it’s like we’re attached to the hip or anything.”

Mitsuru seems almost surprised by Akihiko’s brush-off of her statement. “All right,” she says. “I’m glad it won’t be an issue. Most people are bringing their significant others to the occasion, so I figured you might’ve been upset.”

Akihiko stops mid-soup-shot.

Confusion is starting to settle in. Like an unwanted rash. “Hold on,” he says slowly. He wonders if he didn’t just mishear. “Significant others?”

She doesn’t stumble over the word like he did. “Well, yes,” she says.

Akihiko blinks a few times.

“Is there a different term you prefer?” she asks, then smiles, amused. “I imagine Shinjiro might shy away from _boyfriend_.”

The pieces are starting to come together for Akihiko, but clumsily, like they’re from the wrong puzzle. “Boyfriend,” he says. It tastes funny on his tongue. “Boyfriend,” he tries again. “Do you—do you think Shinji is my boyfriend?”

At first, Mitsuru laughs. When she sees that Akihiko isn’t laughing with her, she stops. “Yes,” she says. “You don’t have to be upset that I know.”

Upset that she knows—

“Wait,” Akihiko says. The room has started spinning very quickly. “Know _what_? Shinji and I aren’t—we're not—it isn’t like that. It never has been!”

“You’re not a couple?”

“No!” Akihiko nearly shouts. The businessmen at the table next to them shoot sidelong glares in his direction, and he makes a conscious effort to calm the hell down. “Why would you even think that anyway?!”

Mitsuru bristles at Akihiko’s snapping. He can’t help it; this is a harrowing situation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would be so upsetting for you.”

“I mean it! Why?”

She shrugs. “I suppose it’s just a certain… intimacy you have around each other,” she explains. “A chemistry that goes beyond familiarity.”

The words are all wrong, not that Akihiko thinks there would’ve been better ones out there. Not for this conversation. He’s starting to get a headache.

He opens his mouth for a rebuttal, but is briefly interrupted by the waiter dropping off the next course, which seems to be a single, quadratic piece of meat. Somehow, the absurdity of the food complements the absurdity of the evening.

“That’s—that’s just because we grew up together,” Akihiko insists once the waiter leaves. “We know each other well! We’re friends!”

“It just always seemed to go beyond that.” She’s much too calm, making Akihiko feel frustratingly irrational in the way he’s flying off the handle. She surveys him, searching. “Is it not something you’ve ever considered before?”

Akihiko sputters. _What?_ Why would he? That’s just—that’s absurd. No. _No_. Absolutely not. Except, well—

Sometimes he has dreams. Awful, bone-rattling dreams where gunshots just keep echoing and he always gets there too late before he wakes up, sweating and shaking. He has other dreams about Shinjiro sometimes too, ones where he also wakes up sweating and shaking, but for a very different reason. Those are always blurrier, like sticky mirages he tries to forget and stuff under his pillow.

Akihiko’s face is burning. He looks away from Mitsuru’s piercing gaze.

“It’s just not like that,” he says, reddening like a lobster. “It _isn’t_. How long has this been going on, anyway?!”

Mitsuru shrugs. “We all just sort of assumed…”

“_We?_”

The look she’s shooting him—as if she’s somehow in awe of his inability to pick up on social cues—feels somehow like a mother’s judgment. “I’m fairly certain the entire team—”

Akihiko nearly spits food in his hurry to interrupt. “_The entire team?!_” he repeats, dumbfounded. “You’re saying _everyone_ in SEES thought this?”

“Well, we never gossiped about it, if that’s what you’re getting at,” Mitsuru clarifies, straightening up. “It only ever came up a few times.”

A few times? That’s about a few times too many. For such small pieces, Akihiko’s meal is starting to become one choking hazard after the next.

And what did they all discuss, anyway? Their sex life? Who wore the proverbial pants? How long they’d been a couple? Who pitched and who caught?

Akihiko’s phone buzzing in his pocket distracts him from this hellscape. It’s a text from Shinjiro.

**Shinji @ 6:02pm:** Don’t forget curtain shopping tonight

Akihiko dreams about crushing his phone in his fist so he never again has to think about buying curtains with Shinji and just how disgustingly domestic that is. Why didn’t he notice this when Shinjiro first suggested curtain shopping to him? For how long as he been deaf to this madness?

“Something come up?” Mitsuru asks.

“No,” Akihiko says roughly, stuffing his phone aside. “Listen. Shinji and I aren’t dating, and we don’t want to be. I don’t know why everyone—it isn’t true, all right?”

“I gathered as much by now.”

Her tone suggests he’s being a bit aggressive, but he’s flustered and feeling a bit hot around the edges. This just took him by surprise, is all. He needs to get out of his restaurant, out of this _conversation_, and process. Marinate in all this. Devise a plan for damage control.

“I need to go,” he says, getting to his feet and pulling his share of the bill out of his wallet. “I have to—” Best not to mention it. He makes an abortive noise. “We’ll talk later.”

“We will,” Mitsuru says, decisive, leaving Akihiko to flee the restaurant. 

Wonderful. He’s already looking forward to that follow-up conversation.

\--

One hour later, Akihiko stares at a wall full of curtain fabric, feeling a little like he’s having an out-of-body experience.

To be honest, he still hasn’t entirely wrapped his head around the discussion he had with Mitsuru. He had the entire train ride, and he still feels muddled. To try and digest it all now while Shinji cost-analyses each pair of curtains, curtains for _their_ apartment, that they live in with a temperamental kid and a dog, feels a bit like trying to coach himself through food poisoning. Akihiko rubs his temple.

“Just pick one,” he says in regards to the curtains.

His indifference seems to push a button. Shinjiro looks at him over his shoulder with pinched eyebrows.

“What?” Shinji says, annoyed. “I could’ve gone alone if you don’t care about the damn things.”

“Sorry, I don’t.” Akihiko actually quite likes the gray ones. “They’re just curtains. As long as they do their job, I’m fine with any.”

“That’s what I was saying, moron,” Shinji says. “Weren’t you listening?” He points at two fabric swatches that look identical. “This one’s blackout. This one isn’t. Which one makes more sense?”

Akihiko’s head is swimming. Why did he have to be here for this? Is this a _normal_ thing for friends to do? Akihiko has no earthly clue anymore; Mitsuru’s words have grabbed him by the ankles and hung him upside down.

“Pick whatever,” he says, hoping that’s the end of things.

It isn’t.

“What the hell’s with you?” Shinji snaps.

“Nothing!” Akihiko snaps in return. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and Shinjiro’s default response of aggression makes him want to talk about it all even less. Why would anyone want a boyfriend like that? Shinjiro is always pushing people away and takes too long in the bathroom even when he knows people are waiting and won’t even share the secret ingredient in some of his best recipes with his oldest, dearest friend.

_Friend_. Just friend. That’s it.

Akihiko jams his hands into his elbows, crossing his arms. “Can you just pick something?” he asks again, grumpy.

“You don’t care?” Shinjiro asks, voice flat.

Actually, Akihiko would really appreciate blackout curtains. “I don’t,” he lies, setting his jaw. “Let’s just get a move on.”

Shinjiro doesn’t push it, just mutters about Akihiko’s mood swings under his breath and picks a pack of curtains. It’s not the type Akihiko wanted, but whatever. _Whatever_. There are other things occupying his brain right now.

His head reels the entire train ride home. Mitsuru’s well-meaning but agony-inducing comments about Shinjiro being his plus-one is buzzing in his head like a bee with a mission. He lets the train rock him back and forth, going with the motions, while Shinji fucks around on his phone and holds onto the handrail.

Akihiko looks at him. Really takes in the sharp angles of his body. The way he’s standing, legs parted, to brace himself against the movements of the train. The harsh line of his jaw, dotted with stubble he missed while shaving this morning. The bulky clothes that bely the slender figure underneath. He looks exactly as he always has, like Shinji, like Akihiko’s best friend, like the kid he ran around with at the orphanage, plus a few years of growing up since then. He doesn’t exactly look like _boyfriend material_, whatever that would be.

Also, on closer inspection, he's wearing Akihiko’s t-shirt underneath his jacket.

“Are you,” Akihiko starts carefully, stopping to lick his lips and give himself a moment to think. “Are you wearing my shirt?”

“Hm?” Shinjiro looks down as if check. “Oh. Yeah.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “It was dark this morning. Must’ve not realized it was yours.”

The implications of this are staggering. Wasn’t it just last week when Akihiko realized he was wearing Shinji’s socks on accident? And then there was that time a few months ago when Shinji wore Akihiko’s scarf and later gave it back smelling disconcertingly of his aftershave.

“Why?” Shinji narrows his eyes. “Suddenly scared of cooties or somethin’?”

Akihiko ignores him. He pretends to be very engrossed in the unidentifiable stain on the seat next to him, much too engrossed to talk. Shinjiro huffs but doesn’t push.

The train ride seems to crawl by after that. It feels as if the tracks have gotten rusty, slowing their speed to a glacial grind against the rails. The weather outside is cold, and it seems to spread into the train cars from the cracks in the rattling doors. Akihiko draws his jacket around himself and sits, silent.

“So did you eat enough?” Shinjiro asks as they get off the train.

Akihiko’s thoughts follow him off the platform. “Huh?”

“At dinner,” Shinji explains. “Did Mitsuru actually feed you?”

His questions are like a blanket burritoed around Akihiko’s shoulders on a too hot summer evening, even if they’re completely harmless. In the past, Akihiko would’ve written off this sort of commentary as almost brotherly concern, but now, Akihiko sees everything through a tinted lens. Is this actually boyfriend behavior, and Akihiko just never noticed?

“Sort of. Not exactly,” Akihiko says.

Shinjiro smirks. “Told you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I’ll make you somethin’,” Shinjiro offers. “If you want.”

Akihiko doesn’t trust himself to do anything but nod. If he’s lucky, Shinji will write off his crabbiness as hunger and then Akihiko can go shower and head straight to bed and by morning, he’ll be all healed. All those weird thoughts will be digested in his sleep and Mitsuru will never bring it up again.

Akihiko shuts his eyes. This all feels very unlikely.

The whole thing nags at him enough, like fire ants under his skin, that he finally decides to let it out before he explodes. He waits until Shinjiro’s setting the table for dinner and the food’s been distributed for him to figure out how to articulate this, and waits some more for their meal to be half-eaten to start talking.

“I had a… weird conversation with Mitsuru today,” Akihiko says. Does he really want to share this? He’s worried that if he doesn’t, it’ll gnaw at him every time he looks at Shinji. 

He’s also worried that the same thing will happen if he does.

“Yeah?” Shinji says mid-chew.

Akihiko sets his chopsticks down. “There’s, um. Been a weird misunderstanding between us. And a lot of the team, apparently.”

“Yeah?” Shinji says again.

Fine. He’ll just spit it out. “They think we’re…” He stops, clears his throat, and gestures between them in hopes that he won’t need to elaborate further. Shinjiro’s eyebrows climb higher, veering on the edge of impatient. “They think we’re dating. Have been dating. They think we’re together.”

He doesn’t even realize he’s wincing until he notices that his face is aching a little. Shinjiro makes a noise, something annoyed and unimpressed, and digs his chopsticks back into his bowl.

“What, you knew?” Akihiko demands.

“No, I sure as hell didn’t know,” he grumbles. “Relax. It’s just kind of stupid, though, isn’t it?”

Of course it’s stupid, but still, Akihiko can’t help but bristle a little. “What do you mean?”

“You and me,” Shinjiro explains. “Why would they think that?”

Under that default irritation, he sounds unfazed. More on the side of curiosity, if not amusement.

“I’m confused about the same thing,” Akihiko mutters. “And also mad! Why didn’t anybody say anything earlier?”

“Guess they thought it was obvious.”

Akihiko makes a noise of incredulity. They’re friends! They’ve always been friends! What about their relationship has tipped people off into the land of ridiculous assumptions and inappropriately romantic conclusions?

“Well, it’s not,” Akihiko says sharply. “I’ve never even thought about you like that.” He hasn’t, seriously. He firmly maintains that a few oddly erotic dreams here and there are normal exceptions. “I mean, have you?”

The front door swings open before Shinjiro can answer, the jingle of Koromaru’s collar alerting them to Ken’s arrival. 

“Hey, guys,” Ken says as he toes off his shoes and hangs up his keys. Koromaru barks hello next to him. “Something smells good.”

“Grab a plate,” Shinji says.

Ken effectively puts their conversation to a screeching halt as he wanders over to the dining table, which Akihiko isn’t sure if he should be grateful for or annoyed by. He wasn’t done talking about this, but at the same time, it wasn’t a conversation he even really wanted to be having. 

Just reliving bits of it is making his ears sizzle.

\--

Akihiko supposes it all started when they began living together again, right at the end of high school.

It was a rough time. Everyone was moving out of the dorms, and Akihiko had felt more rubbed raw with nostalgic emotion than he ever had before, and he couldn’t shake off this empty, dark hole in his life that he wasn’t sure what to do with now that the Dark Hour was gone and S.E.E.S. was over, and then Shinjiro woke up out of his coma, and everything made a little bit more sense again.

Akihiko suggested they live together out of convenience: they knew each other well, they both could use the saved money, and they’d technically lived together before, at the orphanage. They could do it again, even if the second time around meant someone was actually going to be responsible for things like cleaning the toilet.

It didn’t take long after that for Mitsuru to stop by, all worried frowns and furrowed brows. She didn’t mince words or waste time; the dorm was officially transitioning out of the hands of S.E.E.S. and into that of garden variety students, and that meant Ken had nowhere to go.

Akihiko had been sympathetic, but it was Shinji who multiplied that sympathy tenfold and insisted Ken stay with them.

“I owe him,” he said by way of explanation.

Akihiko disagreed. Shinjiro had been comatose the entire time Ken came to terms with what happened to his mother, with what Shinji did for him. As far as Akihiko was concerned, any outstanding debts and grudges melted away when they all decided to stand on Tartarus and fight Nyx.

Also, Shinji took a goddamn bullet for the kid. It was _even_ as far as Akihiko was concerned.

But Ken still showed up, and brought Koromaru with him. And what started out as a temporary solution somehow became more permanent. And then Shinjiro was moving into Akihiko’s room to give Ken more space, because Ken was starting to become a teenager who needed “alone time” and was suffering some truly rancid mood swings. And buying Koromaru dog food and toys and dog beds was something that was purposefully worked into the budget. And life was suddenly very different from the post-high-school existence Akihiko had imagined, which had been a cramped studio apartment and evenings spent alone cramming for college tests and cobbling together instant meals.

It was a small apartment, but it still worked—with a little finagling. There were days when they’d be slightly on top of each other and days when Akihiko felt disturbingly like someone’s dad, like when Ken came home with science homework he needed help with. And then there were days when Akihiko had to stand in line just to use the bathroom, which was still preferable to walking, oblivious, into an unlocked bathroom while Ken was occupied the way teenage boys in bathrooms often are.

He’s walked in on Shinji a few times too, half-naked and wrapped in a towel and just stepping out of the shower, but it was never a _thing_. Not before, anyway.

They were all the inconveniences of living together and sharing lives and space, minus the roominess of the dorm, but nobody minded. If anything, they all welcomed these horribly mundane—if not domestic—drawbacks they now had to deal with, which were miles easier than those of their past involving Shadows and the motherfucking apocalypse.

It got easier over time too. It started working, knowing when Shinjiro would be hogging the bathroom, doing extra loads of laundry for everyone all together, taking Koromaru out on walks again. It felt a bit like living in the dorm, except with less school uniforms and a fair bit more puberty on Ken’s end. It started being something Akihiko actively treasured, a home that wasn’t empty.

He still treasures it today. It could be that people look at their arrangement and get the wrong idea. That _roommates_ really means _roommates_ and that Ken is something of an adopted orphan son rounding out their strange little family. That _Thursday evening movie nights_ are really _date nights_ and that _Shinji’s working late_ is really just code for _sorry we can’t make it but we’re having sex_.

It could really be that people have been thinking this forever, and Akihiko is just now catching wind of it. Boy, does that make him itchy.

\--

He can’t focus on class the next day. The professor’s giving his heart to the lecture, but Akihiko’s mind is elsewhere.

He keeps thinking about what happened. Namely, how Mitsuru ruined _everything_, and now he can’t stop obsessing over things like how Shinji looks at him when Akihiko comes in all wet from the rain, shoulders deceptively tense but eyes soft and concerned. Or how Akihiko sometimes wakes up after falling asleep studying on his bed and finds that Shinji’s turned the bedside lamp off for him.

He’s obsessing so hard it reminds him of the days when he ate, slept, and breathed training schedules. No one had questioned him at the time, but in retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that he was a kid with no idea how to cope with stress or real emotions any way that didn’t involve a punching bag. Now his obsession is Shinjiro, which isn’t all that new, except for the new side dishes that have come along: the decidedly unbrotherly thoughts and not-safe-for-work daydreams.

Akihiko winces. _Daydreams_ isn’t the right word. What is he, one of his high school fangirls?!

Around him, everyone’s scribbling notes as fast as their pens will move. It makes Akihiko slightly regret—slightly—that he isn’t paying better attention to class. Instead he takes his phone out and texts Junpei.

**Akihiko @ 9:46am:** Shinji and I aren’t dating.

He doesn’t know quite why he sends it. His thumbs just tap it out without permission, guided by his own paranoia that everyone is suffering under an illusion about his life that is so far from the truth that it’s humiliating.

It takes a bit for Junpei to respond. Confusion has probably kept him from being able to think of a proper reply.

**Junpei @ 9:54am:** okay?

Akihiko is oddly mollified by that message of acquiescence. He starts to put his phone away when Junpei texts again.

**Junpei @ 9:55am:** just so you know that sounds exactly like what someone who’s dating him would say

He drops his phone, the resulting sound a loud clatter on his desk. He can see the cheeky smile behind Junpei’s words, _knows_ that this is just Junpei’s way of riling him up for fun, and Akihiko shouldn’t fall for this, should be stronger than this, but—

**Akihiko @ 9:55am:** I don’t know WHAT Mitsuru’s told you but we’re NOT

He throws in all the capital letters for emphasis. He’s more intimidating in person than he is through text. He thinks.

**Junpei @ 9:56am:** wait a minute 

**Junpei @ 9:56am:** what’s there to tell??

There’s a pause in which Akihiko assumes Junpei’s switched text conversations to start plying Mitsuru with questions, who surely—no. She’s too strait-laced to start gossiping with Junpei about the juicy details of Akihiko’s love life. There is no love life, dammit! 

Akihiko’s going to focus on how weirdly depressing that sounds later.

**Akihiko @ 9:57am:** Nothing.

He leaves it at that, then stuffs his phone into his bag before he can inadvertently cause more damage. At this point, he’s really just been spreading the rumor himself, even if it has happened accidentally.

How long has this been going on? Were they all just assuming that he and Shinji were boning back at the dorm, too? Akihiko suddenly feels like he needs to call the old group back together just to discuss this and make sure the air is clear. There are people out there just wandering around thinking Akihiko is _in love_ with his best friend.

He’s not sure why it bothers him so much. It just does.

\--

“Listen,” Mitsuru says calmly on the phone as Akihiko walks home from class later. “I wanted to apologize. I realize I may have rattled you the other day.”

Akihiko huffs. He’s torn between forcing her to dish up a better apology and pretending their dinner conversation didn’t get to him at all, not one bit. Also, there’s a good chance that this phone call is a direct result of Junpei reaching out to her this afternoon after Akihiko’s ill-advised freak-out to him. Dammit. “It’s fine,” he says. “As long as we have all that… sorted out.”

Mitsuru hums. He hates when she hums; he knows she only does so when she’s processing her way through Akihiko’s words, like she’s looking for the mark of a liar. “So you and Shinjiro really are just friends?”

Akihiko grits his teeth. Haven’t they covered this? _Extensively?_ “Yeah.”

“And he agrees with that?”

“Yes!” Akihiko shouts. “We’re not dating. And we don’t want to be either.”

“All right,” she says, still very calmly. So calmly that he feels the vein in his temple start to pulse. “No need to get upset.”

Akihiko sputters. The longer this conversation continues, the more his leisurely stroll home becomes an aggressive power walk. He forces himself to slow down, because no, he is _not_ upset. Not more than the allotted amount for the circumstances, anyway.

“I have to go,” he lies. “Thanks for calling.”

“Akihiko,” she starts, but Akihiko’s frantically hanging up before she can continue this nightmarish discussion from hell. He definitely doesn’t want to know what Junpei told her.

Everything just gets worse when he gets home. There’s a box of his favorite crackers sitting on the kitchen counter, which he is absolutely positive wasn’t there this morning.

He reaches for the box, then hesitates. Like examining a cursed package.

“Do you know where these came from?” he asks Shinji when he comes into the kitchen.

“Yeah. I bought ‘em.”

Akihiko frantically shakes the box. “But you don’t eat them.”

“Yeah. I bought them for you, dumbass,” Shinji explains. “Problem?”

So he was just randomly thinking about Akihiko while he was out shopping? Akihiko’s favorite snacks were just in the forefront of his mind? And he bought them because he had somehow taken notice of the fact that Akihiko was running low?

Shinjiro’s face darkens a moment later. “For fuck’s sake,” he mutters. “Don’t. This has nothing to do with people thinking we’re some kinda couple. I just did it because I was in a good mood and didn’t realize you’d get all up in a stupid twist about it.”

“I’m—I’m not _getting all up in a stupid twist_.”

“Yeah, you are.”

He just thinks it’s weird, is all. Mitsuru’s words are burning in his skull. Junpei’s texts are right behind them, and further behind are all the people that may or may not have always been under the impression that Akihiko and Shinjiro are boyfriends. Who knows how many there are?

Akihiko rubs the bridge of his nose. Ken’s going to be home from school soon and the last thing Akihiko needs is an audience for this conversation. “Never mind,” he says. “Just—forget it.”

“Don’t worry,” Shinji grumbles. “Won’t happen again.”

Akihiko rubs his nose harder. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Well, I did. You can just get your own damn snacks in the future.”

“Shinji.”

Shinjiro shoves his sleeve aside to check his watch. “I gotta get to work,” he says, even though Akihiko knows his schedule well enough to know he still has a good hour to laze around. “I’ll see you later.”

He slams his way out the door, leaving Akihiko feeling a little out of place, still part of a conversation that Shinji’s one-sidedly decided to end. All right, so maybe he is overreacting. Or maybe not. He’s really not sure anymore; the objective perspective on the situation is just missing on his end. He supposes Shinji’s always done nice things for him, and there’s no way it always had some secret subtext attached to it. Like how he sometimes makes Akihiko’s favorite dinner when Akihiko’s had a bad day. Or when he brings leftovers home from work at the Beef Bowl place because he knows Akihiko will like them. And Akihiko—Akihiko does nice things too! He gives Shinji haircuts when he complains about his hair getting too scraggy, and he records the TV shows he knows Shinji would want to see.

None of that means anything. Right? Right.

\--

Akihiko leaves the apartment early the next morning, earlier than even Shinjiro wakes up to work on breakfast. The entire building is drenched in darkness, cool in the early morning, but Akihiko needs a release.

He jogs around outside until the university gym opens and the boxing equipment is available. He’s the one to turn the lights on once the janitor unlocks the door, the first one to strap on his gloves. Akihiko hits hard, but without grace, clumsily.

“You’re not on form,” his coach says later after twenty minutes of throwing almost frantic punches. Akihiko knows he’s not, but the accusation still irritates him. He hits harder and nearly falls over under the force of his swing. “You’re sloppy.”

“I’m stressed,” Akihiko says through gritted teeth. “I have a lot on my mind.”

His coach grins. “Picturing a face on that punching bag?”

Akihiko shakes his head. If only it were that easy.

“Need to get laid?”

Another hard no. That might be easier too, even taking into consideration what a terrible flirt he is.

He watches as other boxers trickle in as the morning stretches on. Some he knows, some he’s fought before, some he’s never seen. He watches as they strap on their gloves and bounce around until sweat gathers on their skin.

In between torturous thoughts of Shinji at home, waking up and wondering where Akihiko is like some kind of angry wife, Akihiko diverts his thinking from one trainwreck to another and lets himself consider if any of these men in the room with him are good looking. He supposes they are, at least from an impartial standpoint. Not that he could imagine himself dating any of them. Who would pay for dinners? Who would lean in first for a kiss? What would Akihiko ever do with his hands?

“Hey, Sanada,” someone says—one of the guys Akihiko has seen around campus a few times. “Want to practice?” He waves around his punching mitts.

Akihiko shakes his thoughts aside like he’s erasing a chalkboard. Practice should help. Focusing all his chaotic energy into training should be like falling back into an old routine. He used to be a pro at ignoring reality by distracting himself with rigorous fitness.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

They start sparring, but Akihiko’s focus still isn’t entirely in it. He keeps wondering what it would be like to kiss a guy, or hold a guy, or do a whole lot more with a guy. It’s not like it’s a revolting thought, just… foreign. Not that Akihiko has become an expert in women. He’s never had time for that sort of stuff, or had the desire to humiliate himself trying.

If he told Shinjiro about all this stuff, what would Shinjiro do? A part of Akihiko has a hunch that Shinjiro would roll his eyes, grab him by the face, and kiss him right then and there so they Akihiko would stop harping on about it. Unless, of course, _Shinji_ would find the whole thing revolting.

He takes a swipe for the other guy’s mitt and misses entirely. It’s the sort of failed punch that would send a cartoon character falling backwards on his ass, and it leaves Akihiko red in the face.

“Sorry,” Akihiko says, shaking his head. “Still a bit tired, I guess.”

“No big deal,” the guy says. “Wanna switch?”

“Sure,” Akihiko says, even though what he really wants to do is get the brain cells that remember that agonizing conversation with Mitsuru surgically removed from his brain. If training isn’t helping, what is he supposed to turn to? Actually processing his emotions? That’s one thing he’s not sure anybody ever taught him how to do in school.

\--

Akihiko remembers the days Shinjiro spent in a coma perfectly, vividly. He practically lived inside that hospital room chair after October, pestered Mitsuru constantly for updates when he couldn’t be there himself, even went to the shrine after the hospital’s closing and thought of Shinji, prayed for Shinji. It wasn’t something he had ever done before, but it felt necessary then, important.

“He can hear what you’re saying,” one of the nurses told him after a few weeks. She wore this sad little smile whenever she saw Akihiko, like she pitied him for having to go through this, or for having so much hope in such a hopeless case, but Akihiko liked to believe she wasn’t just bluffing to make him feel better. “A part of him can, anyway. So keep talking.”

Akihiko would’ve even if she had told him that Shinjiro didn’t register a single word coming out of his mouth. It was calming. And considering that most conversations with Shinji felt like talking to a stubborn piece of drywall most days anyway, he could very nearly pretend all was as usual as he sat there and told Shinjiro about his day, boxing practice, Tartarus, and Fuuka’s misguided cooking adventures.

Some days he did more than talk. Some days he would grab hold of Shinjiro’s hand, feeling for a pulse, for the reassurance of warmth. Sometimes he’d let himself cry, just for a moment, when the ideas of Shinji not waking up crept into his brain like water leaking into a basement, rising, rising, rising, before reminding himself that Shinji would smack him over the head if he saw him weeping at his bedside.

When Chidori wound up in the hospital, Junpei started coming along. They would ride the train together, wordless for the most of it. Everybody teased Junpei about his obsession, how he was inexplicably in love with the girl who kidnapped him and tied him up, how his daily trips to the hospital made his crush all too obvious. It never occurred to Akihiko to compare their situations. Now he does, looking for similarities, and more importantly, differences. Were the others saying the same things about Akihiko too when he wasn’t around? How his frequent hospital visits were a clear indication of his connection with Shinji, a connection that went beyond an old friendship?

It all got worse when they learned about The Fall, the realization that everything they knew and loved was going to end. Akihiko would never have gone as far as Junpei as to call himself a hero, but he did carry a responsibility to the world as a Persona user, a responsibility he thought he had been carrying out by hunting the Shadows. Learning that he had been doing just the opposite brought with it a guilt that hung overhead like a thundercloud.

Akihiko’s trips to the hospital increased as the mood in the dormitory decreased too, maybe because Shinjiro’s unconscious form offered more solace than the miserable faces around every corner at the dorm. Shinjiro listened, but didn’t judge. Shinjiro didn’t sulk around with apathy creeping up the sides of his spirit; instead his body was perfectly calm, almost inspirationally peaceful. A beacon of tranquility in the middle of the chaos erupting in the country as the cults grew in number.

Akihiko couldn’t figure out at the time which was worse: the quick, unexpected loss of Miki, or the slow drag of Shinjiro’s coma, knowing all the while that he could die at anytime. The anxiety that came with the latter was stifling.

Shinjiro didn’t wake up until well after they all defeated Nyx, and thankfully well after Akihiko remembered it all happening. He spent a few weeks walking around not putting the pieces together, but now and then, he’d think of Shinjiro—_in the hospital because of gang violence_—and part of the wool thrown over his memory would flicker for a moment, unraveling.

He remembers that day he finally remembered it all. He only had one thought in his brain after he met everyone on the roof: find Shinji. Tell Shinji everything. Don’t stop until he knows the whole story, particularly the fact that it ends happily.

It was frustrating when he couldn't, at least not right away. It took three more months for Shinji to wake up. Akihiko remembers that day too, every detail, like someone’s etched it into his skull. He remembers how Shinjiro’s thumb was the first part of him to twitch before his eyes opened. How Akihiko watched it all for a few seconds, disbelieving, like it was a dream, a movie played for him, certainly not anything real. How he hollered for the nurse and cried a little bit when the nurses and doctors all surrounded Shinji, shining lights, asking him loud questions.

The next few days were dreamlike enough to still fool Akihiko into thinking this couldn’t possibly all be reality. He came every day, staying past visiting hours when the nurses let him for an extra twenty minutes. Shinjiro was too weak to argue with him, but not too weak to listen to all of Akihiko’s stories. Telling them felt more cathartic than any therapy ever could be. It made the hurt from losing Minato hurt less.

“What was it like?” Akihiko asked at some point. “The coma.”

“Long,” was all Shinji said at first, and then, after a moment, he added, “Loud.”

“Loud?”

“You never shut up,” Shinji said.

“Wait, you heard me?”

Shinjiro nodded. Seeing him in the hospital bed wasn’t so terrible now that he was sitting up, lunch tray over his lap, color back in his skin. “I heard all of it,” he said. “It was like… being part of a conversation where no one ever hears what you’re saying.” He smiles at Akihiko, small and private. “So, you know. A normal conversation with you.”

Akihiko dug his knuckles into Shinjiro’s leg. “Hey, I listen to you.”

“Nah,” Shinjiro said. “You don’t. You’re stubborn as fuck.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Akihiko said, and he did. If he hadn’t been so stubborn, Shinjiro never would’ve come back to S.E.E.S.. He never would’ve met Ken Amada and alleviated himself of that burden on his shoulders. Hell, he never would even become Akihiko’s friend. Even that took cajoling, all those years ago in the orphanage.

Akihiko stole a cracker off Shinji’s lunch tray. “Hey. Do you remember the day we met?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You were so annoying.” He caught Akihiko’s eye. “Nothing’s changed.”

Akihiko laughed. Nothing would’ve kept him from laughing. Shinji was awake again. Shinji was okay, all right, just fine. Everything was going to be just fine.

\--

“Maybe it’s because we live together,” Akihiko theorizes the next day as he polishes his boxing gloves in the living room. “What do you think?”

“Plenty of guys live together, Aki,” Shinjiro mutters. “You’re just overthinking.”

Of course he’s overthinking. Akihiko knows this, but he, infuriatingly, doesn’t know why. He just knows he _is_, so much so that he’s started to revert back to his high school coping methods just a little bit. His knuckles are still a little stiff from all the training at the gym. He may’ve overdone it a tad.

He flexes his hand. “Or maybe it’s because neither one of us has girlfriends.”

“You into that kinda stuff now?”

Akihiko shrugs. “Yeah,” he says, although this is a blatant lie. He’s not any better at picking up girls now than he was back in the day. That trip to Yakushima still gives him the shivers sometimes. “Are you?”

Shinjiro’s mouth presses together tightly. Akihiko wishes he could read his expression better, but Shinji’s good at masking every emotion in layers of blunt indifference. Still, Akihiko has an idea what Shinji might be getting aggravated about—he’s not exactly been scoring ladies left and right himself, although Akihiko’s never before gotten the impression that he minded.

“I got too much shit to do,” he says tightly.

Akihiko scoffs. “Like what?”

“Like take care of you, dammit. And Ken. And Koromaru. And make sure this damn house gets swept once in a while.”

He sounds annoyed, and Akihiko isn’t sure at what. That Akihiko asked in the first place? That he’s somehow been cajoled into doing all those things? That he’s become a father figure and a home chef and a butler in the course of a few years when he probably had much bigger and brighter plans in store?

Akihiko frowns. “You don’t have to do any of that stuff. We can all take care of ourselves, you know.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. A flash of fight flares up in Shinjiro’s eyes like a fast-burning wildfire.

“So you don’t need me, is what you’re saying?” he says. “I’m just in the way, huh?”

“I didn’t say anything about you being in the way,” Akihiko says, because stupidly, _stupidly_, his instinct is to go on the defense rather than placate the problem. He knows how Shinji works, he knows how to anger him, so why the hell does he keep doing it? “Look.”

He sighs, but clearly frustrated sighs aren’t allowed right now either, because when Akihiko reaches out to grab Shinjiro’s forearm, he scoots away and gets to his feet, arms crossed in familiar defiance.

“No, I get it,” Shinjiro mutters. “You’re all fine without me and I’m just in the way.” He turns to the door, gearing up for his exit. It feels so much like high school that Akihiko almost feels sixteen again, all lanky limbs and a mouth he couldn’t trust. Come on, haven’t they grown up at _all_? “Have fun finding yourself a girlfriend or something.

“Shinji,” Akihiko tries.

Shinjiro doesn’t wait to hear what he has to say. He’s out the door with a loud slam, leaving Akihiko to feel uncomfortably hollow inside.

They’re adults, dammit. Shouldn’t they know how to communicate better by now in a language that doesn’t include loudly shutting doors? Akihiko sighs and rubs his forehead. He’ll fix this once Shinji comes back from whatever outlet he’s looking for to let some steam out with.

\--

It starts looking a bit grim when a few hours pass and Shinjiro still doesn’t come back. Akihiko feels useless in the apartment, restless and hovering about like a ghost. He doesn’t know where the dustpan is, and he can't decipher the hieroglyphs of symbols on the washing machine, and his stomach is starting to growl.

It hits him then as he looks into the pantry that he hasn’t had instant noodles for dinner in _ages_. Sometimes he scarfs some down for lunch in between classes or trips to the gym, but for the last few years, he’s been coming home to a nice meal and good smells in the kitchen and Shinji swatting Akihiko’s hand away from the plates if he isn’t done with the presentation just yet. All his emergency protein powder has somehow been thrown out too. Akihiko has no clue when that happened.

Fine, so he’ll just cook. It’s not rocket science, and it’s not like he can sit here forever waiting for Shinji to trudge back in through the front door. He should be able to throw some rice together or cut up some vegetables. He’s got this.

He looks up a recipe online, something simple that the author repeatedly describes as _foolproof_, and he grabs Shinji’s apron to dress the part. Ken comes home right as Akihiko is fiddling with the dials on the stove, casting wary eyes into the kitchen as he drops his backpack by the door.

“What’s going on?” he asks tentatively.

“Cooking,” Akihiko says. It comes out a bit gruffer than intended, but he’s already a little annoyed by how he and the cooking equipment don’t seem to understand each other. “No big deal.”

“Where’s Shinjiro?”

“Out.” He glances at Ken, who doesn’t look any less apprehensive about whatever’s going on in the kitchen. “It’s fine. Dinner will be ready soon.”

There’s a pause that is full of loudly judgmental silence. “Okay,” Ken finally says. “I’m gonna go work on homework.”

He hastens out of sight, leaving Akihiko alone with his new greatest enemy: the recipe. It’s just a fish dish. Thousands of people prepare fish—successfully—every single day. Why can’t Akihiko be one of those people?

He finds some in the fridge, along with roughly everything else he needs, plus and minus a few substitutions here and there. Who cares? He’s not feeding an emperor. It’s just him and his own refined palate. And cooking can’t be that hard, can it? Not everyone can be as bad as Fuuka back when she would experiment with food at the dorm, right?

He starts searing the fish. He’s liberal with the oil in the pan, making sure to be generous, and cranks up the heat. The fish sizzles like it would in a professional steakhouse, which Akihiko takes as a sign he’s doing this right.

How long does fish need to cook for? Akihiko peers into the pan, uncertain. The oil has started to bubble and dance around the fish, spitting outwards. Akihiko decides to leave it be and search for some extra ingredients to add flavor. Carrots would work, he thinks. And snap peas. And maybe onions? He digs around in the fridge.

Now is when Shinji would push him aside and take over dinner duty and tell Akihiko to get the hell out of the kitchen. Akihiko’s almost a little annoyed that none of that is happening now. He’s just started to rifle through the fridge drawers when his pan catches on fire.

It happens disorientingly quickly, coming with a mighty _whooosh_ as the flames take root. Akihiko watches in stunned horror, still half in the fridge and forgetting all common sense, as the fire gains force. In one blink, it’s skyscrapering out from the pan and toward the kitchen cabinets. The flames look exceedingly angry.

Water. Water! Akihiko only waits one more frozen second before jumping into action, seizing a bowl and filling it in the sink. He throws it onto the fire.

It’s evident not even a full second later that he’s made a mistake. The water doesn’t quench so much as it feeds, and a burst of volatile flames pushes upward from the pan and nearly takes Akihiko’s eyebrows with it, licking up the kitchen walls in a matter of moments. He grabs the pan in a fast-acting impulse to remove it from the heat, but all that does is slosh oil around the kitchen. Goddammit.

“Ken!” Akihiko yells, frantically waving building smoke away. He drops the pan back onto the stove as the heat around him grows to worrying levels, the fire cracking as if chars the underside of the cabinets. “_Ken!_”

Ken doesn’t seem to hear him over the loud roaring of the building flames. He tries his hand at the water again, because water is how you fight fire, that’s _obvious_, but all he does is make the fire spit out at him like an angered lover. What the hell kind of fire isn’t placated with water?! Akihiko jumps back, takes one horrified look at the fast-spreading flames, and bolts for the hallway.

“Ken!” he yells again, his voice a little hoarser now. Dammit, it got smoky in there. “Ken! Get Koromaru!”

Ken pokes his head out his door. “What’s going on?” His nose wrinkles as he starts smelling the smoke infesting the entire apartment. “Oh, shit.”

_Oh shit_ is right, Akihiko thinks. The beeping of the smoke alarms follows a second later, loud and shrill, and Akihiko grabs Ken by the elbow and takes action.

The dash out the door is not exactly smooth. Koromaru won’t stop barking, and Akihiko can’t stop coughing, and combined with the smoke alarms that have started ringing through the entire building, they’ve started to attract attention from the other apartments. The apron wrapped around Akihiko’s waist is making it perfectly clear just who they all have to blame for this little incident.

By the time the building starts evacuating and the fire truck comes wheeling down the street, too much is going on for Akihiko to keep track of it all. The ambulance comes straight after, the sirens much too loud this close, and Akihiko and Ken get ushered inside without a word despite Akihiko’s continued protests. The fact that his voice sounds like his throat has turned into a soot-filled chimney doesn’t help his case much, and after the oxygen mask gets strapped over his mouth, he takes that as his sign to officially stop talking.

\--

“I’m fine,” Akihiko says for the billionth time as a doctor checks his breathing again, dragging the cold chestpiece of the stethoscope over his skin. The resulting look from the doctor reminds him of how Mitsuru used to berate him when he insisted he could train while he was injured, which reminds him, none too pleasantly, that she might just show up any minute to do it again. Akihiko should’ve _demanded_ to go anywhere but a Kirijo hospital.

“This’ll go a lot faster if you cooperate,” the doctor says, in a tone that makes it clear this is less of a suggestion and more of a command. Akihiko sighs and lets her prod at him a bit more. He _does_ feel a bit rattled, even if he doesn’t want to admit it.

He turns to look at Ken, who’s swinging his legs over the edge of the hospital bed.

“You okay?” he asks.

Ken nods. “The kids at school aren’t going to _believe_ this,” he says, sounding almost giddy.

Akihiko sighs again. “Any chance I could get you to _not_ tell this story to everyone you know?” he asks. “And maybe just forget all about it?”

“No way.”

The doctor finally pulls the stethoscope away, scribbling some notes on the clipboard hanging on the back of Akihiko’s bed. Before Akihiko can ask when he’s allowed to go home already, loud and frantic footsteps from the hallway distract him.

“There you are,” Shinjiro says from the doorway, looking like a thunderstorm personified, eyes dark and mouth tight. His hands are stuffed in his coat pockets, but Akihiko can still make out from the bulges that they’re rolled into fists. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Akihiko feels color flare up on his cheeks. This was one of Those Things that Shinjiro was never supposed to find out about, even if the kitchen would have been scorched to hell for the next few weeks and reek of smoke.

“How did you know we were here?” he asks.

“Ken called me,” Shinji says. “What the _fuck_ were you thinking?”

“I was just cooking dinner!” Akihiko says, starting to feel less embarrassed and more defensive.

“Why were you cooking dinner?”

“Because you left and I didn’t even know if you were coming back!”

“Of course I was coming back, you moron,” Shinjiro mutters. His expression softens slightly, like when the side of a mountain crumbles just a bit. The emotion in his eyes as he looks at Akihiko—exasperatedly, fondly, something else too—makes Akihiko’s gut tighten, before he quickly turns to Ken, clearing his throat. “And you. You okay too? Koro-chan?”

Ken is smiling like a moron, like Akihiko nearly burning down their home is a riot. “We’re fine. Koromaru is being checked out by the vet downstairs, but I think he’s fine too.”

“Thank god,” Shinji mutters. He scrubs a hand over his face. “You have any idea how worried I was?”

His fists are trembling a little and his face is remarkably pale, so Akihiko is getting the idea.  
Shinjiro’s genuine concern feels oddly like he’s getting a big hug.

“We’re fine,” Akihiko promises. “We’ll be discharged soon.”

“You better be,” Shinjiro says. Threatens? His eyes linger on Akihiko for one long, intense moment before he looks firmly away, stuffing his hands back into his pockets. “I’m gonna go talk to the doctor. Make sure everything looks okay.”

He stomps out of the room with haste. Akihiko isn’t sure, since no one actually said anything remotely apologetic, but he thinks they’ve made up.

\--

The kitchen is a no-man zone for a good few weeks, but Ken’s inability to keep his mouth shut extends to Mitsuru, who sends over a few contractors to expedite the process considerably.

She comes over to oversee the progress with just enough of a heads-up for Akihiko clean up enough to shove all their takeout boxes into the bathroom before she knocks on the front door, pretending there’s some sense of order in the apartment before letting her in. It doesn’t matter how many times they run a mop through this place, Akihiko will never feel like it’s quite up to Kirijo standards.

Mitsuru surveys the damage with crossed arms, but also with an amused smile that takes the judgment out of the former.

“Did Amada experiment in the kitchen?” she asks.

If only. “Not quite,” Akihiko says. “I might’ve been to blame here.” At her raised eyebrows, he adds, “Turns out you don’t get a lot of cooking experience from microwaving instant noodles.”

Her eyebrows raise and then fall, understanding. “Well. I’m glad no one was hurt.” She stops to watch the workers for a moment as they rip charred bits of cabinet from the wall, then turns to Akihiko as if something has just caught up to her as an afterthought. “Doesn’t Shinjiro typically do the cooking?”

Akihiko _really_ doesn’t want to tell her this story. He can already feel his face heating up. “We got into a fight.”

“A fight?” she says. Akihiko waits for her to ask what about, teeth already digging into his tongue. He can tell she wants to, but she ultimately seems to find it inappropriate to pry for details, asking nothing of the sort. “I hope it’s since been resolved.”

“Yeah,” Akihiko says, although he’s really not sure. It’s not like they’ve talked about it. It’s not like they _could_. He looks down, annoyed. He’s never been the best with words. _Expression_. His fists have always done all the necessary talking for him. There’s a reason he’s a boxer and not a counselor, even if the senseless jock stereotype is weighing uncomfortably on him like a leaden backpack.

“You’ve both grown a lot since high school,” Mitsuru says. Akihiko isn’t sure if that’s just a statement or a reminder that Akihiko should think about.

After Mitsuru leaves, he reconsiders the whole _talking it out_ idea. It’s not something he and Shinji have ever been particularly good at. Even nowadays, Shinji’s relationship with words—or heaven forbid, long sentences—is shaky. A heart-to-heart seems laughable.

Still, it’s better to not go on like this. Akihiko almost burned down the whole apartment; some sort of affirmative action must be taken.

He takes his opportunity when Shinji comes back from work, catching him in the hallway by his sleeve. “Hey,” Akihiko says.

“Hey,” Shinji says.

“How was work?”

Shinji shrugs. “Fine.”

Akihiko feels like he knows the answer to his question, but looks futility straight in the eyes and asks anyway. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

Shinjiro’s face is blank. “What?”

“Well, you know. What we were discussing before…” He gestures helplessly at the barbecued kitchen. He doesn’t feel like he’s getting much of a green light from Shinji here, but keeps going nonetheless. “You know that I like having you around, right? That we need you here?”

The compliment is apparently too much for Shinjiro to handle. “Tch,” he says, bristling at—what? Akihiko apologizing? Trying to say a nice thing? “Figure that out when you couldn’t make your own dinner?”

Akihiko frowns, but doesn’t let himself rise to the bait. Shinji’s default reaction to anything is sometimes still, even now, to provoke. “I’ve never taken you for granted, Shinji,” he says. Memories of the coma attack him like bee stings. Shinjiro, lying still in the hospital bed. The mechanical beeping of his heartbeat. The way no one ever reassured Akihiko that Shinjiro would get better, how not even the doctors knew. “You have no idea.”

Shinjiro’s rougher edges soften a little. “All right, fine,” he says. He crosses his arms across his chest. “Guess I can't go anywhere even if I wanted to. You’d burn down the whole damn place.”

Akihiko would take that as his cue to start getting argumentative if he couldn’t hear the underlying message. He knows Shinji well enough to recognize subtext when he sees it.

“So… we’re okay?” he asks.

“Always are, aren’t we?” Shinji says. “Now get out of the way. I want to take a shower.”

Akihiko gets out of the way. Mitsuru was so wrong. _Everyone_ has been so wrong. They’re fine! They’re totally fine. They’re just like they always have been. Soon he’ll be laughing about those ridiculous rumors, Akihiko tells himself. Soon he won’t let them consume his every thought.

\--

His comeuppance for the kitchen incident comes in the form of true corporal punishment: doing it all over again.

The fear trickles in slowly as he watches Shinji finagle the front door shut with his foot because his hands are laden with grocery bags. So many grocery bags. It looks like Shinji raided a supermarket. From his spot where he was previously calmly, innocently reading on the sofa, Akihiko is now slightly worried.

“What’s all this for?” he asks.

Shinjiro pulls the last of six grocery bags off his forearm, setting them down on the table. Akihiko can make out some ingredients poking out of the bags—frozen peas, sesame oil, beer, radishes—

“All this?” Shinjiro repeats, scoffing. “Just some food.”

“Someone coming over I don’t know about?”

“Nah, you just eat more that you realize.”

“Hey,” Akihiko starts, but Shinji cuts him off before he can go into detail about his diet plan.

“C’mon,” he says, cocking his head to the kitchen.

Akihiko doesn’t move at first, just vaguely tilts his book aside, because it sounds like he just got invited into the kitchen, _warmly_, at that, for some reason beyond his grasp.

“Come on where exactly?” Akihiko asks after a second.

“The kitchen, moron,” Shinjiro says. “Tch. I thought I would teach you.”

“You want to teach me.”

“What I _want_ is for you to not burn the place down again,” Shinjiro says, like this is all a safety measure Akihiko is compelled to comply with, which is both a dirty trick and a well-played move. “_C’mon_. I ain’t asking you again.”

It’s sheer curiosity that pulls Akihiko to follow him. Shinjiro is usually actively working to keep Akihiko _out_ of the kitchen, and being invited in feels like a child getting to peek into the locked closet at the end of the hall full of birthday presents. The kitchen is new and shiny, fully finished and varnished by Mitsuru’s contractors, and stepping into it now feels more like a sin than ever before.

“Seriously?” Akihiko asks, disbelieving, even as he trails along into the kitchen. There’s no way this can end well. The tidal wave of grocery bags makes Akihiko feel hopelessly lost, like an untethered buoy floating through the sea. He takes a small, unnoticeable step backward.

Shinjiro notices anyway. “Is the big bad Akihiko afraid of a stove?”

Akihiko is too old to be easily baited like this. He stands up straight. “No,” he grumbles.

“Then c’mon. I’ll be here to hold your hand if you start to cry.”

“Shut up,” Akihiko says. He approaches the counter. “Tell me what to do.”

He waits for Shinjiro to give him a narrow look, to realize that Akihiko really is at square one here and this might not be as easy as he expected and subsequently revoke his offer, but Shinjiro does no such thing. His patience, Akihiko thinks wonderingly, has really grown since they were kids.

“Here,” Shinji says, handing him a cutting board and a handful of carrots. “Let’s start simple. Peel these. Then dice them. Little cubes.” He reaches into a drawer and pulls out a knife. He hesitates before handing it over, eyebrows pulled tautly together. “I can trust you with this, right?”

Akihiko snatches it from his hand. “Yes,” he grumbles. “I’m not a toddler.”

Shinjiro apparently needs some convincing of this, because he watches Akihiko like one might a child with a wall of live electricity cables. Akihiko ignores his probing stare and starts chopping, only to be interrupted by a heavy sigh.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” Shinji says, _at first_, and then, “I’ve just never seen that... technique before.”

There is a very lengthy pause before Shinji’s mouth forms the word _technique_, long enough that Akihiko suspects he doesn’t think much of his technique at all. He puts the knife down. “Do you want to do it?” he asks, exasperated. “And I’ll just—just take over whatever you’re doing and…” He’s not actually sure what Shinjiro’s doing. “...and wash the rice?”

“Good god.” Shinjiro sighs again, then shuffles closer. “Here. Can I show you?”

Akihiko nods. He’s a fast learner, and how hard can chopping up vegetables be anyway—and wow, Shinjiro is suddenly disconcertingly close to him.

“Here,” he says again, practically folded against Akihiko’s back. “Look.”

He wraps his hand around the one Akihiko is wielding the knife with. His fingers are warm, if not a little rough, guiding Akihiko just a little more firmly than they need to be. Shinji has never been good at being gentle, but insanely enough, Akihiko thinks he’s trying to be.

It’s nice. It feels—almost weirdly intimate. They’ve never touched like this before.

“See—like this,” Shinji says, moving the knife. It reminds Akihiko of what exactly is going on, pulling him out of the reverie created by the fact that Shinji’s mouth is so close to his neck. Akihiko is feeling a little numb, the sensations of Shinjiro’s chest brushing against his back hard to swallow.

Is he doing this on purpose? Is he not reacting at all? If Akihiko shifted his hips back right now, would he bump into—

The front door squeaking open and Ken passing by the kitchen freezes Akihiko. He tenses, feeling Ken’s probing state from the doorway. A moment later, Shinjiro stops moving too as he takes note of the interruption.

What? Fuck, _no_. It’s not an interruption. Nothing to interrupt! Akihiko is blushing places he has never felt blush before.

“Ken,” Akihiko says. He quickly draws his hands back to his own personal bubble. “H-how was school?”

“Fine,” Ken answers. He leans a little further into the kitchen, peering in. “What’re you guys up to?”

“Cooking dinner,” Shinjiro says, moving away from Akihiko. The sudden lack of nearby warmth is jarring, both in how much Akihiko misses it and how painfully he’s now been made aware of their bodily contact. “This time I’m here to make sure we don’t lose the whole kitchen.”

“It wasn’t the whole kitchen,” Akihiko mutters.

“All right,” Ken says after a suspicious amount of staring and long, sweeping looks at their proximity. “I’m gonna go out with some friends.”

“Not before you walk Koro-chan,” Shinji reminds him.

Ken’s vague noise of assent sounds from down the hall, leaving Akihiko to stand in the cloud of his own awkwardness. He takes a step aside. The cloud follows anyway.

“Um, so. Dicing?”

Shinjiro can’t seem to look him in the eye. When he finally does, clearing his throat, he looks a little red in the cheeks. He quickly averts his eyes again. Maybe Shinji has his own cloud too.

What the hell just happened?

“Sure,” he says. “Think you got it figured out?”

Akihiko has nothing, absolutely nothing figured out.

He swallows around a dry tongue. “Sure,” he says, and gets back to work. He resolutely does not think about how warm Shinjiro’s chest was for the rest of the night.

\--

Akihiko can’t even go into the kitchen for a solid week after The Moment he and Shinjiro had without automatically remembering how it felt to have Shinji pressed up against him, all firm shapes, warm breath against his neck.

No! No more of that. It’s starting to weird him out.

That weekend he calls up Yukari to enlist her help locating one of her single friends willing to date him. It shouldn’t be too hard; girls were all over him in high school, to the point where it was pathetic, not to mention so annoying that there were certain hallways Akihiko had to actively avoid just to dodge some of his more dedicated fans. Time has passed, but Akihiko must still have a certain level of surface charm, if nothing else.

“Um,” Yukari says when Akihiko explains his situation. “But why—”

“Let’s not get into that,” Akihiko hurriedly cuts in. “So do you know any girls who are available?”

At first there’s nothing more than a long, unsure silence stretched out over the phone. Finally, Yukari hesitantly goes, “I guess.” Her confusion doesn’t dissolve. “And you want me to set you guys up?”

“Yes,” Akihiko says. “Can you?”

“Are you… having troubles at home?” She seems tentative of Akihiko’s mood, like one misstep and Akihiko will go tattling her unhelpfulness to Mitsuru. “What about Shi—”

“Just do it,” he says, cheeks heating up. “I have time Thursday evening, if that works.” He adds, “Don’t say anything to Shinji.”

Another suspiciously long pause. “Okaaaay,” Yukari says. “Is, um. Is something going on?”

“No!” He’s not even entirely sure why he doesn’t want Shinji to know; he just doesn’t. Besides, he’s not sure Shinji would even care anyway. “Yukari, can you set me up or not?”

“I… I guess so,” she says through a sigh. She doesn’t seem particularly thrilled about the mission. “Are you _sure_—”

“Yes!” Akihiko assures her. He is so very sure. He has never been more sure. He _needs_ this. A reminder of his own heterosexuality, of the dates he really ought to be going on. There’s just no good excuse beyond _Shinji might not approve_.

Even that, in all too many ways, feels like an excuse. Akihiko is his own man. And he is capable of talking to girls, thank you very much. And a guy his age really should be spending more time sowing his wild oats, rather than scheduling movie nights and doing laundry and sorting through bills with his best friend.

\--

Yukari’s friend is nice enough. Pretty in a polished sort of way. She loves tennis, her passion for fitness something Yukari no doubt thought would bring them together, but as it is, Akihiko can’t keep from zoning out each time she starts telling him about her topspin serves and favorite rackets and double faults.

He squints at her, trying to figure out if they went to Gekkoukan together while the waiter clears away their appetizer plates. He doesn’t recognize her face, but then again, he’s not sure he could even pick his homeroom teacher out of a lineup these days. The memories of high school his brain’s decided to keep are of breaking into the gym to save Fuuka and how the boxing team could never keep up with his level of training and how the floors of Tartarus would sometimes look like the floor tiles in the classrooms. It occurs to him that those are all memories—important ones, at that—he could never share with the average person, date, girlfriend, etcetera.

He can share them with Shinji. There was never a development in Akihiko’s life that Shinjiro wasn’t a part of, even from a distance. He still remembers those days when they first discovered their Personas, and with them, the Dark Hour. Having Shinji there with him, seeing Castor rise with Polydeuces, was like having a lifeboat with him in a sea of questions. Their interests always overlapped, a Venn Diagram with a huge middle.

Looking back, those were good times. Especially when, after all the bad, after all the struggle, he got to see Shinjiro’s eyes blink groggily open again for the first time in months in that hospital bed. It was like somebody had finally pressed unpause on Akihiko’s life.

His mind is wandering. He’s supposed to be listening.

“—since then. What about you?”

Akihiko nods, his brain empty. He’s pretty sure she was talking about school just now—maybe class? Maybe textbooks? He needs to pay better attention.

“I’m, uh. I’m studying fitness therapy right now,” he says.

She leans her elbows on the table. “Yukari told me you used to box.”

“I still do, actually.”

“My friend’s cousin boxes too! He’s been teaching me some of the moves...”

She launches into her mismatched knowledge of professional boxing, losing Akihiko’s attention again in the process. Akihiko wonders what Shinji’s doing right now at home. Maybe making gourmet food for Koromaru, which probably would be better than the overpriced and overdone steak in front of Akihiko right now. Or maybe helping Ken study for exams, which probably would be more enjoyable than this conversation. And all the while, Shinjiro is totally oblivious to the fact that Akihiko is out on the town, on a _date_, with a _girl_.

How would he feel if Shinjiro was the one out dating? What kind of girl would Shinji even take on a date? Suddenly Akihiko’s insides feel a bit like a can of soda that’s been too heavily shaken.

Across the table, Yukari’s friend says something. And then she’s quiet, waiting, staring at him.

Oh, shit, she’s asked him a question. Her eyebrows are up high, expectant, and Akihiko doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.

“Um,” Akihiko says, grasping for the right response to pull out of thin air. He takes a leap. “Good one!”

The puzzled look she fixes him with makes it clear he didn’t pick the right reply. He tries to salvage the situation to the best of his ability.

“I mean,” he says, “yes. Of course.”

She narrows her eyes. “Are you even listening?”

Shit. “Uh. Y-yeah.” What would the books say about something like this? Or are the books too disappointed in his people skills to bother helping right now? “Go on.”

She shoots him an unimpressed look. “I guess the rumors are true,” she says, and then horror of all horrors, she starts packing up her things. No, no, no—this is a disaster.

“What rumors?” Akihiko demands.

“The ones about you and your _roommate_, obviously,” she says, grabbing her bag. Akihko has a hunch that this date is not going well.

“My—my roommate?” Realization sinks in, just as much like a box of stones over the head as it was the other times. “You’ve got it all wrong! He’s _just_ my roommate!”

“Say hi to Yukari for me,” she says as she slips into her jacket.

Akihiko feels any shred of hope for this date wither away, much like his sanity. His shoulders slump, defeated, as he watches her hurry out the restaurant. What the hell is wrong with him? He couldn’t ever shake the harem of girls that followed him around in school.

Then again, none of them really knew him. Would they have run screaming too if they actually did?

Weakly, he calls the waiter over once he’s done wallowing in his own self-pity. What makes it worse is so clearly that the downfall of this date came with his wandering mind, which wandered right over to Shinji. Is that some sort of sign?

He’s too depressed to make heads or tails of it. He pays the bill and doesn’t linger at the scene of the crime, the crime being his complete inability to charm a woman.

\--

It’s late by the time Akihiko gets home. He doesn’t go back immediately—it feels too much like a defeat considering it’s still early evening—and instead spends time dicking around town, hanging out at the mall, checking in on Kurosawa. Trying to wrap his head around the disaster that was this evening.

Was the root of it all really just his awkwardness with picking up girls? Or was it something else, and did that something else have to do with the fact that he was too busy thinking about Shinji to bother listening properly?

Thinking about it too hard makes his head hurt. Yukari’s going to be mad. Mitsuru will inevitably hear about it soon and judge him so hard, even if she does it silently, because Mitsuru has had experience judging people her whole life. And Shinji—

“How was your date?” asks a bitter voice from the dark of the living room.

Shit, Shinji’s still awake.

Akihiko freezes as the front door creaks shut behind him. He really thought he had come back late enough to avoid this confrontation, but perhaps he didn’t cover his trail well enough in the first place. He flicks a lamp on, bathing Shinji in yellow light where he’s sitting on the couch.

“How’d you know?” Akihiko asks.

“Yukari,” Shinji says. Akihiko makes a mental note to reflect this betrayal in the quality of her birthday present this year. “She told me she set you up with someone. How’d it go?”

This feels disturbingly like a trick question. “I, well.” Akihiko cringes. “Uh.”

“It’s okay,” Shinjiro says. What is? That he didn’t tell Shinji about it, or that he went at all? “It’s not a big deal. For the record, I hope it went well.”

“You do?”

Shinji sighs. Now with the light on, Akihiko can see that Shinji’s hand is wrapped around the TV remote just a little too tightly. “‘Course,” he says. “I support you, you idiot, all right? If getting a girlfriend is what you want, then I… really hope it works out.”

His voice sounds funny. Sincere, but clenched by a resignation that seems almost like… disappointment? Sadness? Akihiko can’t tell. Is it concern, based maybe on the possibility of Akihiko meeting someone great and inevitably moving out and leaving Shinji to deal with the lease and Ken’s homework questions alone?

“Thanks,” he says. “By the way, if you want to know how it—”

“That’s okay,” Shinji cuts in. “I can imagine just fine on my own.”

Despite the casualness of his tone, Akihiko recognizes the tightly-wound stress holding his face sharply together, the uncomfortable way he’s holding his shoulders. The tells are easy to read, just like in boxing. Akihiko suddenly feels incredibly dumb. He’s not sure where the feeling’s coming from, but it’s a sharp, prodding thing that stings in the gut.

“Hey,” he says. “Let’s watch a movie.”

“Huh?”

“C’mon, Friday night movies. Like we used to.”

Shinji eyes the sofa in consideration. He seems to be on the verge of saying no, but then—

“All right,” he says. “But I pick the movie.”

“Fine,” Akihiko says, as if they don’t have the same taste in movies anyway.

They settle onto the couch after Shinji heads to the kitchen to grab snacks. Ken comes out of his room ten minutes into the movie and joins in, pretending he has no homework so he can watch with them, while Koromaru curls up on the rug in front of the TV. It feels so domestic, so cozy, that it almost ventures into surreal; the darkness of the room, disturbed only by the ever-changing light of the TV, envelops the room as if it’s a chunk of space.

Akihiko keeps thinking that all those years ago, he never could’ve predicted—never would’ve _dared_ to—that things would work out like this. A wave of warmth, of gratitude and relief, of being home, grabs Akihiko by the gut. He looks over at Shinjiro, face pale in the TV’s illumination, eyes no longer bogged down by the effects of Strega’s medicine, mouth no longer twisted by the everyday guilt and self-disdain that had taken up residency in his soul. Akihiko’s chest loosens even more, as if making room for extra affection, as if—

No. None of this could be true. Everything everyone’s been saying, there’s no way it actually makes sense. No, that would be ridiculous and not to mention _embarrassing_.

He’s known Shinji forever, ever since they were two naive kids in the orphanage, and a friendship like that can’t just change overnight.

But… did it actually _change_? Was this, whatever it is, somehow there all along, hidden, untapped, like a treasure waiting to be found?

“Quit staring, dumbass,” Shinji mutters around a mouthful of popcorn.

“Huh?” Akihiko blinks. Has he really been staring this whole time? “Sorry.”

Akihiko tries to slot himself back into the movie, but his mind’s preoccupied now, whirring like a blender. He just can’t wrap his head around it all. He’s never looked at Shinji before and thought about dating him, or being his boyfriend, or kissing him.

His neck is on fire, and it’s spreading to his ears. Now that he’s thinking about kissing Shinji, he can’t stop thinking about it. What would it be like? Would he kiss hard and aggressive, just like he fights? Or would he be soft and careful, gentle like he so often tries to be when things matter?

Next to him, Shinji shifts, stretching his arms. When they come down, they’re draped over the back of the sofa. Akihiko is acutely aware of the fact that if he were to lean back, press a bit into the cushions, he would feel the brush of Shinjiro’s thumb against his shoulder blade.

Shinjiro isn’t the type to touch. He’s never been the most tactile of boys, outside of throwing punches. Growing up, Akihiko doesn’t remember hugs or pats on the back. He remembers sparring on the grass outside the orphanages, all moments of contact rough and sharp. The resulting bloody noses and bruised knuckles. Akihiko had been so proud of those mementos back then. Proof of his strength. Of his friendship with Shinji, the toughest kid in the entire orphanage.

Akihiko leans back infinitesimally. His back presses into the sofa, then barely grazes Shinji’s finger. It twitches, but doesn’t move away. Doesn’t move closer either, just stays perfectly still.

By the time the movie ends, Ken’s fallen asleep, mouth open and head tipped back onto the couch cushions, and Koromaru’s similarly occupied in a cozy nap. Shinji wakes Ken with a gentle shake of his shoulder.

Gentle. When did Shinji start being gentle anyway? When Akihiko wasn’t paying attention?

“Hey, sleepyhead,” he says to Ken. “Go to your bed.”

“Mmmrf,” Ken says, but he peels his eyes open; picks himself up off the floor, and goes to brush his teeth regardless.

The credits roll in front of them, fast-moving lines of white on black. Shinjiro stretches, lifting his arms up over his head.

“Tired?” he asks Akihiko.

He isn’t; he’s anything but. His mind is fizzing, as if his thoughts are spinning fast enough to generate electricity. Is that Caesar’s effect, or just Shinji’s?

It’s strange that night, going to bed. It’s the first night in a while that Akihiko is very aware of the extra bed in the room, of Shinjiro’s presence there with him. It felt, for the longest time, like being boys back in the orphanage in their bunk beds, sharing rooms and spaces and stories. Tonight, Akihiko watches Shinjiro pull on his pajamas and slip into his bed in the other corner of the room, and thinks about how it’s something he’s gotten used to. What would life be like without him here? Or with Akihiko elsewhere? Who else does he know so intimately that he knows their entire bedtime routine?

What would it feel like to cross the room and slide in underneath the covers next to Shinjiro and press up close to the curve of his back?

“That was a shit movie, huh?” Shinji asks as he flicks the bedside light on.

“Mm,” Akihiko says, mind completely elsewhere. He couldn’t even summarize that movie if someone paid him a billion yen.

“Maybe we should let Ken pick next time.”

“Uh huh.”

Shinji climbs into bed. Earlier, Akihiko watched him brush his teeth over the sink, floss, and lay out his clothes for tomorrow. Akihiko knew exactly what he was going to do before he did it. In the morning, he’ll stretch, gripe about his back, and get up early so he can use the shower before Akihiko because he doesn’t like showers that are already damp when he gets inside. Then he’ll make breakfast for everybody and tell Akihiko his work schedule for the day while they eat. It’s a routine Akihiko’s lived through a hundred times before, one he knows like the back of his hand. It’s a routine he could see himself living forever.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, Akihiko thinks. He is so fucked.

\--

He cuts class the next day to go to Bookworms. The friendly old couple who works there hovers around him a little bit, offering to help him find what he’s looking for, but the more his mission is put under scrutiny, the more skittish he gets. What he’s doing here is something no one can _ever_ know about. He’s not even all that comfortable with himself knowing what he’s doing either.

He looks through the self-help section until he finds what he’s looking for. _So You Think You’re In Love With Your Best Friend?_ seems to fit the bill the best, even if Akihiko’s face threatens to burst like an overheated tomato just looking at the first few pages. He makes the decision to buy it before he chickens out, and grabs a bunch of other books too to pile on top the first one so it isn’t too overly visible when he checks out.

The old couple doesn’t make any commentary about his purchases, which is the one true miracle of Akihiko’s day. All he gets a crinkly old smile and a melon bread handed to him alongside his purchase.

Buying the book was the first trial; sitting down and actually _reading_ it is the second. He puts it off as long as he can until he gets home that day—no way is he daring to read it in public—and waits until he can slip away into his room unnoticed. Ken’s still at school and Shinji’s at work when he arrives, so Akihiko takes advantage of the privacy and gets reading. Even if looking at the cover is making him a tad nauseous.

Just opening the book feels like taking part in some illicit crime, Akihiko’s skin going hot as he starts to read. 

_Do you feel as if the bond between you and your best friend has changed?_

Well, yes.

_Have you awoken to new, foreign feelings about them?_

Yeah, maybe.

_Are you confused and overwhelmed by the new light you’re seeing your bestie in?_

Akihiko stops to cringe at the word _bestie_—it’s possible he’s not quite the intended audience for this book—but carries on nonetheless.

_Then this book may be for you!_

Akihiko is going to eat this book when he’s done reading it. There’s just no other way to be absolutely certain no one will ever find out he spent real actual money on it and then read it. Would it somehow all be less embarrassing if he didn’t read the whole thing? Just sort of skim and skip chapters here and there before chucking it?

He thumbs his way past the prologue. He hopes this book isn’t only about diagnosing the problem, but actually fixing it too. What to do now that he’s convinced he has a crush on his best friend. What the next steps are. If there’s a manual, by any chance.

_Relationships change constantly,_ the book begins. _They evolve, sometimes predictably, and sometimes in directions we never could’ve imagined. Whether you’ve slowly come to terms with it or woke up one day to suddenly realize your BFF is a major hottie, you have a duty to yourself to properly examine these feelings and their origins. If—_

“Akihiko-senpai?” someone says, muffled.

Akihiko nearly rockets out the ceiling when a soft knock sounds on the door. He almost falls off the bed as he fumbles with the book, and ends up sitting on it in his haste to tuck it away.

Ken is the one to poke his head through the door.

“Hey, do you think you could help me with—” Ken stops, clearly taking notice of Akihiko’s colorless face. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Akihiko says immediately, going for easy and breezy. He’s just sitting on a book that’s telling him what to do about being in love with his best friend/roommate/undefined. Everything is fine!

“You sure?” Ken presses. Delicately, like one might papier-mâché. “You’ve been acting a little… weird lately.”

“Have I?”

Ken nods. The look on his face is one of genuine concern, which makes it much harder to lie and pretend Akihiko’s behavior has been perfectly normal as of late. He knows he’s been a bit skittish recently as he’s been digesting all these developments, but to even have Ken notice? The kid wrapped up in exams and girls and who to take to the Summer Festival? This is bad.

How much does this mean Shinji’s picked up on too?

He shifts on the book he’s sitting on. It’s starting to dig unpleasantly into the sides of his ass. “Well,” Akihiko begins carefully, “Mind if I talk to you about something?”

“Sure,” Ken says. He takes a few steps further into the room. “What’s going on?”

Akihiko battles with how to phrase this. The last few times he’s tried to have this conversation, it felt like leading himself down his own personal rabbithole.

“I heard from Mitsuru recently that, uh. There’s been a weird rumor going around for a while now, and.” He swallows, and loudly hears himself doing so. “She told me that you guys used to think that Shinji and I… had something going on. And maybe still do.”

Ken doesn’t seem too taken aback. “Uh huh.”

“I just wanted to make sure that you knew that wasn’t true.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ken says, like it’s obvious. It’s the kind of reaction Akihiko has been sorely missing from his other friends. “But… I don’t really get it.”

Akihiko’s relief screeches to a stop. A terrifying moment passes in which he wonders if this is finally the time he’s been dreading when he has to explain Things to Ken that only parents should have to go through the torture of doing. “You don’t… get it?” he asks carefully.

“Why you guys aren’t dating,” Ken says, again like it’s obvious. “I mean, it’s really easy to see that Shinjiro is into you.”

The oxygen level in the room drops to frightening levels. “Wh—what?”

Ken crosses his arms, sighing. “Is it because of me? Do you think I won’t approve or something? Cause I’m not a little kid anymore. I can handle it.”

“Handle _what_?!”

“You guys dating, or whatever. It’s not that big a deal.”

“Ken,” Akihiko says, a little hoarsely. He needs to stop this insanity now before it goes further. “I think there’s been a… misunderstanding. Shinji and I—we’re not—not like that.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Ken,” he says again.

“Seriously, I know you guys aren’t blind. Or stupid. It’s not a big deal. You know that, right?”

The look Ken gives him feels more suspiciously paternal than it does of one befitting a teenager. He was always precocious, but being able to make Akihiko squirm in his seat is bringing whole new meaning to the word.

“It _is_ a big deal,” Akihiko insists. “Stuff like that—it ruins friendships, Ken, and he’s—I would never risk ruining something like that.”

He thinks of how close it all came to being ruined a few years ago, how long Shinji spent in that coma, how many times Akihiko came to his hospital room just to wonder if everything was somehow his fault. It was a sheer miracle that he got Shinji back, and to test fate like that again—no. 

Everything is perfect. Their life here is messy and stressful and cramped at times, but it feels so much like a handmade family that Akihiko doesn’t ever want to lose it. Any half-baked emotions, any prickling feelings, they just wouldn’t be worth it. And that’s all it is, isn’t it?

“I still don’t get it,” Ken says. “How can you be so brave sometimes and look something like Nyx in the eye and be so _not brave_ whenever… I dunno, people you _like_ are involved.”

Something like a gong goes off in Akihiko’s stomach. He feels personally called out.

“I know it seems weird, but I’ve always been like that,” he admits. He spent more time than he’s willing to admit in the dorm studying up on how to make good impressions and how to flirt and how to carry on engaging conversations. He scratches the back of his head. “It’s just… hard for me. Training is easy. Fighting is easy. You know what to expect. People are…”

He sighs, trailing off, feeling like a bit of a failure as far as being someone Ken can turn to for advice goes. He can’t even give himself advice, dammit.

“Well…” Ken starts. He seems to be thinking hard about this. “They both take practice, right? Maybe you just have to work on it.”

Akihiko huffs. “How?”

“I don’t know. Maybe talking is a good start?”

Talking. That’s one way to simplify all this. Then again, maybe Akihiko really _is_ overcomplicating, if not reverting back to the immaturity of high school. Back then, talking with Shinji about something—anything, depending on his mood—was a gamble, his default mode always set up to combat. 

It occurs to him that Ken’s around the same age Akihiko was when he was in high school. Sometimes he forgets that little fact.

“When did you get so smart?” Akihiko asks. He feels a bit like someone’s just laid down an ace in front of him while he has a handful of puny threes and fives. 

“Oh, I’ve always been like this,” Ken says, smiling wide and innocent.

“And modest,” Akihiko adds dryly. “Don’t forget modest.” He shifts on the bed, sighing. “All right, I’ll take your advice. I’ll try talking to him.”

“Good luck,” Ken says. He pauses for a moment. “Uh. Think you could still help me out with Koro-chan? I think I accidentally fed him something I wasn’t supposed to.”

If this is anything like the time Ken tried to share his ice cream with Koromaru, Akihiko has a suspicion there’s a pile of something unsavory out there waiting to be cleaned up. He moves to get up, then remembers the book hidden underneath himself.

“Uh, sure,” he says slowly. “Just, uh. Give me a moment.”

He waits until Ken leaves and then stuffs it deep into his pillowcase, away from any prying eyes or doggy paws. The last thing he needs is Koromaru gleefully gnawing on the cover. As far as Akihiko is concerned, not even _Koromaru_ can know his horrendous secret.

\--

He goes to the gym to try and clear his head before he tries out Ken’s advice. It’s always worked for him, a method of meditating, a way to free his brain of all the clutter and just let his body be in control for a while. The weightlifting benches are all taken, so he heads over to the treadmills and just runs. Runs fast enough to feel his lungs get tight.

It reminds him of those nights they’d run through Tartarus. Slowing down was never an option then, physically or mentally. Even when the outlook was bleak, even when they were all without a goal, he took to the distraction of training like a duck to water. The sensation of growing stronger, of finally being in control of his own power, was like an addiction.

None of that can help him now. Hell, it didn’t help him much back then either, at least not outside of Tartarus. He thought it did, but the illusion broke that night he watched Nyx crumble out of the moon while he stood below, helpless. If falling in love with someone is just as frightening, Akihiko can’t imagine trusting himself enough to do it.

Unless he already has, and he just wasn’t paying attention. Everything with S.E.E.S. and Nyx was like rolling with the punches, one hit and slap and kick after another. This whole thing with Shinji was nothing like that; it crept up on him, slid into the edges of his being without him even taking notice. It settled in and made itself cozy, like a stray cat wandering into someone’s home. Maybe Akihiko’s just now figured out the cat was there. Or maybe he subconsciously knew about it all along, and just now realizes he’s grown fond of it. Or maybe he needs to drop the ridiculous metaphor.

He exercises until all his muscles ache. It’s dark by the time he goes home and unlocks the front door, the moon bright and welcoming in the sky through the windows.

“You’re later than usual,” Shinjiro grumbles as Akihiko eases the door shut behind him. He’s sitting on the couch, flipping through a magazine, while a cooking program plays on the TV. Akihiko spares a glance. Looks… complicated.

“Sorry,” Akihiko says. “Sometimes you just gotta run off some steam, you know?”

“Call next time,” Shinji says.

“Why, why were you worried?”

“Yeah.”

Akihiko huffs out a laugh until he realizes Shinji’s being serious. That’s not something he ever would’ve admitted to when they were kids, or even teenagers. Back in the day, Shinjiro nursed his hard-fought Tough Guy Status like he was getting paid to stand in the background and never exchange so much as a single feeling with someone. Now—

Well, now he really is grown up. Maybe Akihiko should a little too.

“Sorry,” Akihiko says. “I was... out thinking.”

Shinji squints at him. It seems like he doesn’t quite trust that Akihiko’s actually telling him the truth, but he doesn’t push it, just turns the TV off and gets to his feet.

“Okay,” Shinjiro says, leaving it at that. He heads for the bedroom and Akihiko feels his chance—and some of his bravery, overflowing on the battlefield but hiding in his reserves here and now—slip away.

“No, wait,” Akihiko says quickly, stepping in front of the doorway. “I want to talk.”

Shinji’s quiet for a moment. “Okay,” he says again. His eyes don’t betray a single emotion, no depth of hope or even curiosity visible. “What about?”

Akihiko opens his mouth, but falters. It’s awkward to do this standing. He wishes they were sitting, but he has the nagging feeling that wouldn’t be any less awkward, because the situation in of itself is awkward, because Akihiko’s about to confess—well, something. No use denying it now, even if his anxiety is screaming at him to ignore all these _feelings_ bubbling in his stomach.

No. If he had enough courage to face the bringer of the freaking apocalypse, he can face his weird crush on his weird best friend.

“Um,” he says, looking for the right words to accompany this fleeting courage. “About the thing Mitsuru said. About us.”

Shinjiro exhales an irritated breath out through his nose. “For fuck’s sake. Let it go, Aki.”

“No. I mean—can we just talk about it?”

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Maybe on your end! But for me—Shinji, I just have to get this out. It’s driving me up the wall.” Even as he’s talking, the urge to pull out his punching bag and let loose is overwhelming. All these suppressed emotions aren’t good for his health, he’s pretty sure. “What if there’s some truth to it?”

“Truth to what?” Shinjiro huffs again. “Us being together? ‘Cause I didn’t get the memo.”

“I meant more like… the reason everyone thinks we’re together in the first place.”

“Does it even matter, Aki?”

Akihiko can tell Shinji’s losing patience with this conversation, not that he had much to begin with. He’s rolling his eyes and his shoulders are tensing up and he looks like he’s a few seconds away from headbutting Akihiko aside so he can access the doorway, but Akihiko has to get this out. He can’t sit on it anymore, smother it, act like it doesn’t exist. He’s probably had these feelings longer than he’s even comfortable admitting, way beyond the coma, beyond high school, beyond the orphanage. He’s not sure why he’s coming to grips with all of it _now_, but good timing is something their friendship has always been woefully bereft of.

“I think it does,” Akihiko says stubbornly. He knows this is the point when he explains why, when he makes his grand speech, but he’s never been good with articulation, with wielding words with precision and purpose. He’s always turned to physical outlets, which—

Hey. Maybe not such a bad idea.

“If it’s that’s big of a goddamn problem for you,” Shinjiro starts to say, but before he can finish, Akihiko is grabbing him clumsily by the shoulders and kissing him.

It isn’t all that good. It’s a bit off-centered and Akihiko’s upper slip is sweating so much it’s practically slippery, and Shinji doesn’t seem to be reacting at all, and it feels a bit like kissing an angry mannequin.

The mannequin pushes him away. It’s not an aggressive shove of disgust, which should count as a victory, but it’s firm and certain, hands carrying casually contained strength holding Akihiko out of kissing distance. It is so clearly a rejection that Akihiko feels his gut swoop straight into ice water.

“Aki,” Shinji says. His voice is hoarse when he speaks. “You can’t just—listen, just because everyone says this should be happening doesn’t mean it has to, all right?”

“What?” Akihiko asks, confused.

“Experimenting like this just ‘cause Mitsuru is saying we look like boyfriends is just—it’s just—” He stops, eyes averting Akihiko’s. “It’s not a good enough reason. It’s a shitty reason, actually.”

His expression takes a turn into dark territory, going from discomfort to anger to the worst of all—_disappointment_. Akihiko might’ve quailed under it had he not been completely preoccupied with fixing this misunderstanding before it gets out of hand.

“Wait, Shinji,” Akihiko says, grabbing him by the wrist. Shinjiro’s entire arm is tense, muscles pulled taut. “You have it all wrong. I’m not—this isn’t some weird experiment or anything.”

“Then what is it?” Shinjiro asks.

The disappointment fades slightly, hesitantly. Underneath it rests a gruff veneer of cool anger. Akihiko knows that layers further down, where his truer feelings reside, there might be hope, fear, affection. He just has to chisel his way down to it. 

Akihiko feels his heart accelerate, skipping beats as it quickens, like a child tripping over a too-fast jump rope. “I think I’m in love with you,” he manages to get out of his mouth.

He musters up the courage to meet Shinji’s gaze. He’s expecting a lot of different expressions, but the look of unimpressed exhaustion isn’t one he was anticipating.

“You think,” Shinjiro repeats, voice carefully measured so as to not sound too friendly.

_What do you want from me?_ Akihiko’s brain howls internally, but for all his complaining, he _knows_ perfectly well what Shinji wants. It would be a mistake to beat around the bush here, to do this half-assedly. He’s either all in or not at all.

“I am,” Akihiko says, pulling all his bravery close to his gut. He has the feeling this would be so much easier if he were only wearing boxing gloves; it would give the impression that this is a battle, a war of affections. Akihiko doesn’t puzzle over the oxymoronic nature of that for too long. “Uh. In love with you. I’m pretty sure I’ve been for a while.”

“You… think you’re in love with me?” Shinjiro repeats slowly, carefully. “Mitsuru’s shit somehow magically made you realize all that?”

“Yes. No. It was a lot more than that.” Akihiko winces; he feels he’s not quite doing any of this right. “Ken helped too.”

“_Ken?_”

This is torture. Akihiko knows it. He just wants to hear what Shinji thinks about this, what Shinji thinks about his feelings and his confession, the very one that’s making him feel disconcertingly green around the gills, but Shinji won’t stop drawing the moment out, talking about everything and anything but what matters. Akihiko desperately wants to crawl into his comfort zone where he can box his way out of every problem.

“Just tell me how you feel,” Akihiko says. “I love you, all right? I told you I love you, and—”

“All right, all right,” Shinjiro mutters. “Just let me process this for a second.”

Akihiko swallows, the sound abnormally loud in his dry throat. What is there to process? Love doesn’t exist in the gray matter; either you love someone or you don’t. If Shinji’s deliberating this long, Akihiko can only imagine he’s wracking his brain thinking of ways to let Akihiko down quickly.

That, or he’s enjoying Akihiko’s squirming.

“Come on,” Akihiko growls impatiently after a few pained seconds of silence.

Shinjiro shoots him a look. Akihiko can’t help it; patience has never been his strong suit, especially not with things that matter to him.

“Have you thought this through?” Shinjiro asks.

More than he really needed to, Akihiko thinks. He nods. “Yeah.”

“And this—” Shinji gestures between them, taking a step closer, “—this is what you want?”

“Have you been listening or what?” Akihiko snaps. His body is jittery, alive, thrumming with what feels like Caesar's electricity. “What about what you want? Just tell me.”

Shinjiro’s face is a storm of frustratingly unreadable emotions. Akihiko just wants to—he just wants to grab him and coax the words out of him, figure out if all this suspense is good or bad. If he’s holding back for the sake of Akihiko’s feelings, fuck that. Akihiko’s dealt with worse. It’ll be awkward as hell and they might have to reconsider their living arrangement, but Akihiko won’t brood forever, and he may as well start the healing process now—

“How about I just show you?” Shinjiro says, and the next moment, he’s crossed the room in two large steps and taken Akihiko’s face into his rough hands, kissing him quiet.

There’s no mannequin anymore this time. Now Shinjiro is demanding and unyieldingly intense, almost aggressive in his initiative, pushing against Akihiko with a strength that’s absurdly arousing. Akihiko grabs him by the arms, squeezing tightly at his elbows, and kisses back just as ferociously. By the time Shinji pulls back to breathe, his mouth is wet and hot where’s it’s brushed against Akihiko’s, his breathing ragged.

Wow. If that was meant to convey a message, it was all but fireworked into the sky. Akihiko thinks he gets it.

“So you…” Akihiko stops, waiting for the confirmation. “You too?”

Shinji rolls his eyes. The situation is so fogged with Akihiko’s heady, nether-region interest that the levity of it is welcoming. “Yeah, you moron,” Shinji says. “Thanks for finally noticing.”

“Thanks for—wait, _finally_?”

“It’s not like I wasn’t dropping hints.”

“Hints?!”

“Don’t you think there was a reason everybody thought something was going on between us?”

“Yeah, but,” Akihiko sputters. “I’m—I’m not—” God, does he suck at stuff like this. Mitsuru’s also a little sheltered as far as dating outside of a Kirijo-approved business transaction goes, but even _she_ might be smoother at all this than he is. He thinks about the books he tried reading as a teenager about making people laugh and all the books he’s bought since and feels himself go tomato red. “I have no idea what I’m doing with these things.”

“Maybe ‘cause your one-track mind is always in the ring?” Shinji offers, rolling his eyes again.

“It’s not always in the ring,” Akihiko says. “Sometimes it’s at home here with you and Ken.”

“Home, huh?”

Where else would home be, Akihiko thinks. “Well, yeah.”

The corner of Shinji’s mouth twitches upward in something that might just be a smile. “C’mere,” he says, reeling Akihiko in by the waist and kissing him again.

This kiss is different than their first, bruisingly different. Akihiko doesn’t waste time this time around. He slides his hands into Shinji’s hair, thumbs brushing over Shinjiro’s earlobes. He’s feeling, discovering, unearthing parts of Shinji he’s never known even after years of combative friendship, parts that he now wants to see with much fewer clothes.

And maybe this should feel weird, essentially deflowering his nearly lifelong friendship with Shinji, but instead it feels _exhilarating_, brave in ways he never has been before. It’s like years of wasted time are now catching up to him, making him frantic, urging him to have Shinji closer, as close as physically possible.

He grabs hold of Shinjiro’s shirt and tugs, stumbling, only vaguely having the couch in mind as a destination. Shinjiro makes a noise of approval into Akihiko’s mouth, obviously understanding the plan, and wraps two strong—_erotically_ strong—arms around Akihiko to show his enthusiasm.

“GNAUGH,” says Ken, suddenly, inexplicably, in the doorway, and when Akihiko jumps away from Shinji to look like a more respectable adult, Ken’s arm is thrown over his eyes as a blindfold.

“Ken,” Shinjiro growls, audibly miffed at being interrupted. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here!”

“Weren’t you going out with friends tonight?”

“It’s raining, so we rescheduled!” Ken cries. “Although it was obviously the wrong decision!”

He’s acting so scandalized, so overdone in his complaints, that Akihiko can’t help but rub it in his face. “What happened to you being old enough to handle this?”

“I’m going to my room!” Ken declares, walking backward out the door. “And I’m not coming out until it’s safe!”

The door slams behind him as he kicks it shut, but Akihiko can still hear him hightailing it down the hall. He would feel a little worse about it if his feelings weren’t already occupied being exuberant and relieved and aroused all at once. Shinjiro seems to be on the same page, seeing as he immediately pulls Akihiko back into his arms once the coast is clear.

“He won’t be coming out for a while,” Shinji says onto his ear, and then he _bites_, which shouldn’t be as shiver-inducing as it is, but it is, and then he slides his hands over Akihiko’s ass and Akihiko momentarily loses his entire vocabulary.

“We should,” he manages to get out, “go to our room, really.”

_Our room_ has never sounded more suggestive. The dark film over Shinji’s eyes seems to imply he’s in agreement, and then Akihiko’s being tugged straight to their bedroom and kissed hungrily, savagely, the way someone like Shinji, who is all contained and suppressed emotion, would kiss.

“Should we push the beds together?” Akihiko proposes.

“Later,” Shinji says, which seems like a smart decision, because any second spent not kissing Shinji definitely feels like a waste. They have a lot of time to make up for. Years! They spent years _not kissing_, and that is, in retrospect, one of the stupidest things they’ve ever done. All that time spent fighting, arguing, not talking, it could’ve been spent doing _this_.

They go back to the kissing. Akihiko has no idea why this feels _so_ good. He expected it to be nice, pleasant, but this is all-consuming, prickling, like unwrapping a birthday present after a long year’s wait. How long has he been wanting this, exactly? He suddenly can’t remember anything _but_ wanting this, probably because Shinji’s hands are back on his ass again, squeezing, pulling him in closer. Is it possible he has a thing for Akihiko’s ass? He might have to investigate that later.

“You sure about this?” Shinji asks into the hot space of Akihiko’s mouth—his _mouth_. They’re touching mouths, which is so far out of Akihiko’s comfort zone it’s little more than a dot in the distance, but something about it being _Shinji_ he’s doing this with is making it strangely easy. “We don’t have to—”

“I’m sure,” Akihiko says. He kisses Shinjiro again, addicted to the sensation, and keeps kissing him until he’s dizzy with it, wanting so hard he _aches_ with it.

They fall on his bed without Akihiko realizing it. Shinji catches himself on it to keep from falling on him, but Akihiko _wants_ him on top, pushing into him, and in a moment of daring—definitely borrowed from the battlefield—Akihiko yanks on Shinji’s elbows until they’re pressed together from head to toe, and—holy shit, is that what Akihiko thinks is pressed against his thigh?

Shinji’s hands slip up his shirt, distracting Akihiko momentarily from the situation down below when Shinjiro’s thumbs brush over his nipples, rubbing them into a pebbled hardness. Akihiko groans, loud enough that the neighbors might start complaining, and arches upward, creating friction between their cocks. Suddenly, pants feel like an entirely useless invention, just a barrier in the way between him and the skin-on-skin contact he so desperately wants with Shinji.

“Fuck, Aki,” Shinji says, rubbing his hips down into Akihiko’s, pushing their hardnesses together. It doesn’t help Akihiko that Shinji’s still rubbing his nipples and his mouth is now panting against his neck. 

Akihiko is done being patient. He tugs at his shirt, throwing it aside, and does the same with Shinjiro’s, yanking hard enough to rip. Shinji finds his hands after that, stilling them, squeezing. Of all his expectations, Akihiko thought Shinji would be the one bursting with impatience during sex, all aggression and hastiness, but lo’n’behold, it’s _him_ who can’t seem to tear their clothes off fast enough.

Shinji squeezes his hands again, pushing their foreheads together. His eyes are dark, moonless. “You nervous?” he asks.

“Why would you say that?”

“You seem nervous,” he says, but he’s smiling, amused, and he leans in to kiss a trail down Akihiko’s jaw. “‘S okay. Just relax.”

Akihiko listens, and lets Shinji bite a path down his bare chest, stopping only to taste here and there. He desperately wants to know if Shinjiro’s done this before, but also desperately doesn’t want to ask, just wants to _enjoy_ and revel in the fact that Shinj wants him, just as much as Akihiko wants him too.

Another _I love you_ bubbles up Akihiko’s throat that he’s quick to push back down. Best not to wear it out.

Instead, he lets his hands wind into Shinjiro’s hair, lets his eyes close as Shinji sucks a hickey onto his abdomen, his fingers fumbling with Akihiko’s pants. When did he slither so far down? Akihiko whimpers—no, he couldn’t have, he’s never made a sound like that ever before—and lifts his hips, silently begging, pleading. Shinji’s chuckle, vibrating on his skin, makes it clear that he’s getting the message.

The situation gets a little realer when Shinjiro pulls his pants off, and even more so when he gently hooks his thumbs into Akihiko’s underwear, grazing his hipbones. His best friend is seeing him practically naked. His best friend is seeing his erection press against his briefs and his legs shake as he waits for said best friend to touch him. Akihiko feels himself go hot all over.

“Shinji,” he breathes, suddenly finding it’s the only word his mouth knows how to say right now.

“Shh,” Shinji murmurs. He tugs gently on waistband of Akihiko’s briefs. “Can I?”

What a stupid fucking question. He groans, throwing his head back against the pillows. “Are you kidding?” It’s possible Shinji’s just enjoying slowly torturing Akihiko into madness. “Yes! _Please_.”

“Great manners,” Shinji comments, and then he’s sliding Akihiko’s underwear down his legs and taking his neglected cock in hand.

It vaguely registers in Akihiko’s mind that it’s the first hand to ever touch his cock that isn’t his own, which is instantly apparent in the roughness of Shinjiro’s palm, the length of his fingers, the firmness of his grip. Akihiko will deny the loud gasp-moan-whine that escapes his throat later, but for now, he’s too busy focusing on the fact that Shinjiro is currently giving him a handjob. _Shinji_ is giving him a _handjob_. And a really _good_ handjob at that. His strokes are strong and even, his palm dragging up with just the right pressure, his free hand rubbing over Akihiko’s hip, but it’s fucking game over when Shinji’s warm breath gusts over the tip of his dick, a warning sign for what’s about to happen.

“Shinji,” Akihiko gasps. “You don’t have to.”

“I do,” Shinjiro says immediately. “I’ve only been thinkin’ about it for years.”

And then he descends on Akihiko’s cock without preamble, mouth sliding over the head and sucking, hard. Akihiko very nearly loses all of his sanity in one fell swoop. He curses, bowing his back hard enough to bang the headboard against the wall.

“Careful,” Shinji warns, but only for a second before he’s right back to—mercilessly—sucking Akihiko off.

It feels a little bit like warm, velvet heaven. Akihiko gives himself over to the sensation, to the impending release, and murmurs Shinjiro’s name over and over, in between gasps, his shame having flown out the window the moment Shinji’s tongue entered the equation.

Suddenly, loud, muffled music thumps through the wall from Ken’s room. Shinjiro briefly pauses in his work.

“Huh,” he says, leisurely stroking Akihiko with his hand in his mouth’s absence. “Looks like you’re a bit too loud, Scream Queen.”

“Shut up,” Akihiko says, hips squirming, desperate to get that blowjob back up and running again. “_Shinji_.”

He’s starting to learn that moaning Shinji‘s name comes with incredible results. Something deep rumbles through Shinjiro’s throat, hungry and primordial, before he returns to Akihiko’s cock with renewed fervor. He takes enough of Akihiko into his mouth that it feels like some sort of impossible magic trick, further and further, until he bumps the back of Shinji’s throat and he retreats again.

Not that it matters. Deep or shallow, Shinjiro’s doing fine work below Akihiko’s waistline. More than fine. What he lacks in experience he makes up for in determination, tongue hot and insistent and mouth eager and warm. It’s nothing like his own hand hurriedly bringing himself to orgasm in the shower in the mornings; no, this is building up need and ecstasy and want in Akihiko like a pack of explosives crouching beneath his heart. Or possibly his dick.

In the middle of all this disorienting sucking, a thumb rubs against Akihiko’s entrance, gently prodding, and Akihiko is suddenly blisteringly aware of the fact that his nightstand is tragically missing lube and condoms.

“Hey,” he says, once he’s found his breath—when did he lose it? He tugs carefully on Shinji’s hair. “I don’t have—uh, well.”

He cocks his head to the nightstand. Shinji follows the movement, eyes landing on the empty drawer. “Ah,” he says. “Never known you to be unprepared for something.”

Indignation briefly flares up in Akihiko’s chest. “It’s not like I knew this was going to happen.”

“I’m just messing with you,” Shinji says. “Don’t worry. I can make do.”

Shinji’s version of “making do” is grabbing Akihiko by the thighs and licking over his fluttering hole before Akihiko can so much as ask what he has in store, tongue pushing and pulsing against it. Akihiko must black out while this is happening, because there’s no way this is actually going on between his legs, but then Shinji’s fingernails dig into his thighs just enough to prove this is reality, not some fever dream he’s cooked up while asleep.

“Shinji,” he gasps out, hips stuttering forward.

“Too much?” Shinji asks, and his voice has gone considerably deeper, raspier.

Not nearly _enough_. Akihiko could lay here forever, submissive and needy, unraveled and panting. He shakes his head, unable to find the words, and wordlessly shifts his hips around.

“Please,” he says.

“Mm,” Shinji says, and for once in his life, he doesn’t argue, just goes straight back to work.

His tongue is very, very enthusiastic. It’s an alien sensation, a tongue _there_, a mouth _there_, but with its foreignness comes a completely unexpected vein of pleasure. Akihiko feels like he’s about to rocket out of his own body, just waiting for the impending explosion.

Then a spit-soaked finger is rubbing against Akihiko’s hole before Shinji moves to swallow down his cock again, the two sensations battling for attention in Akihiko’s fried brain. For all his bad attitude and pretending to not give a shit about anything, Shinjiro doesn’t do the things he cares about half-heartedly—at least, not anymore, not since the coma. His finger pushes into Akihiko, slowly at first, before it slips in easily. It’s even stranger than the tongue lapping at Akihiko’s hole was, somehow not at all like Akihiko imagined. There’s a burn, but it’s not as bad as he expected. Not nearly as bad, getting better and better still as Shinjiro stretches him, until suddenly it’s very easy to imagine something else of Shinjiro’s inside of him.

“Shit,” Akihiko breathes, the word coming out choked. “More?”

Shinji grunts against his thigh, biting down, but he obeys, and then Akihiko can feel another finger, newly slick from Shinjiro’s multi-talented mouth—who knew?—push into him. Shinjiro is careful, taking his time, showing patience Akihiko has never known him to have. He’d be impressed if he wasn’t so busy right now.

“Shinji,” he says, just to say the name out loud. To say it during a time like this. Akihiko’s spine arches as Shinjiro’s mouth goes back to his cock, as if he can’t quite stay away even though he’s concentrating on easing two fingers deep inside him. Akihiko’s breathing comes out in stutters. “_Yeah_.”

It’s hard to pin down why this feels as good as it does. It’s a new kind of intimacy, one that’s leaving Akihiko more raw than a failed boxing match, all of himself on display as Shinji slides his fingers in past the knuckle, then out again, then back in. The rhythm Shinji’s built up is making it all too easy to get lost in the pleasure, in the ache that’s being satisfied each time Shinji thrusts his fingers back in and sucks hard on the head of Akihiko’s cock. 

As if out of curiosity, Shinjiro curves his fingers, curling in just that bit more, and Akihiko jolts. Suddenly, someone’s moaning—is that him?—and Shinjiro is humming appreciatively on the cock between his lips. He seems to be a remarkably quick study of Akihiko’s body, just like he always was. He always knew just where to hit back when they were horseplaying kids, and now, well. That’s a skill that’s certainly evolved.

Akihiko comes without even meaning to; the sensations just build and build like a car on an acceleration ramp until he’s snapping, crying out as Shinji sucks him through his orgasm. 

The world is blurry for a moment, and it isn’t until it all comes slowly back into focus that Akihiko realizes how sweaty he is, how much his legs are trembling. He lets out a deep, sated breath as Shinjiro slips away from his cock and withdraws his fingers.

It leaves a strange emptiness behind, one that Akihiko can imagine filling in other ways. He looks down between his legs where Shinjiro is still crouched, eyes dilated wide and hungry. Akihiko licks his lips.

“You want to?” Akihiko asks, spreading his knees just enough to make it obvious what he’s suggesting.

Shinji touches his thigh, curling a reverent hand around it. “Later,” he says, licking his lips. “God, Aki, _later_.”

And then he’s thrusting against Akihiko’s hip, the movements rough and messy, uncoordinated and wild, and Akihiko can do little but cling on and move in time with Shinjiro’s thrusting. Next time—next time he’s going to have Shinji stretch him and slide inside him and fuck him, really fuck him, and the very idea of it is already making Akihiko eager enough to want to sprint straight down to the nearest drugstore for condoms.

But for now, he wants to help, so he reaches between their slick bodies to take Shinjiro into his hand, cataloguing the hitching breath and following groan that leaves his mouth. He’s hot and heavy in Akihiko’s palm, a bit thicker than Akihiko’s own, and watching Shinji fall apart as he strokes him and thumbs over the wet head has Akihiko reeling, dizzy behind the eyes.

It’s a little bit messy when he comes, the result splattering between them on Akihiko’s stomach, but Akihiko is too focused on the look on Shinjiro’s face to mind, the pleasure wired over it.

“Fuck, Aki,” Shinji says, and the way he says Akihiko’s name right after coming, voice dripping in rough satisfaction, shoots down Akihiko’s body like a coil of charged lightning.

“Good?” Akihiko asks.

It earns him a snort. “Obviously,” Shinjiro says. “You couldn’t tell or what?”

Akihiko elbows him. Shinji’s stomach is naked where he does, as is his elbow, as is _all of him_, and if he wasn’t so pleasantly drained right now, he might find it in himself to be embarrassed. As it is, Akihiko can’t muster up a single shred of insecurity. This isn’t just some guy or stranger in his bed; this is _Shinjiro_. Someone who’s been there with him through everything.

“It was good for me too,” Akihiko tells him, in case it wasn’t obvious.

“Tch. It better have been,” Shinji says, a touch of pride audible. “I only gave it my all.”

One of his arms slips over Akihiko’s bare chest, not quite holding, but not quite _not_ either. He pulls Akihiko in closer, close enough to not leave room for any molecules between him. His nose brushes against Akihiko’s cheek, nudging.

Akihiko curls nearer to him. “You’re a cuddler, huh?” Akihiko asks, unable to resist. “I shoulda known.”

“Shut up,” Shinjiro says, but he doesn’t let go.

\--

Akihiko ends up falling asleep without meaning to. Everything was just so warm and soft and pleasant in his post-coital state, only made comfier by Shinjiro’s naked body pressed against his in places their bodies had never touched before but were suddenly now quite familiar with. The fact that the bed was too tiny for the both of them and that Akihiko had come on his stomach faded into irrelevance at the time, leaving nothing but an after-sex deep-seated satiation behind.

He wakes up very much aware of the tiny bed, but thankfully cleaned of the come. Shinji must’ve gotten up and wiped him down without Akihiko noticing.

…before hightailing it out of there. Akihiko waits for the morning blur to fade from his eyes to confirm that Shinjiro’s gone from his bed.

Well, fuck. Akihiko shouldn’t be surprised, not when Shinji is as good as running and hiding as he is, but he still had hoped that he wouldn’t have regretted what they did. From Akihiko’s perspective, things went exceedingly, embarrassingly well last night. From Shinjiro’s, things might look completely different in the cold light of day. Maybe he got overwhelmed. Maybe it’s hard to come to grips with getting what it is you thought you wanted for years.

Or maybe Akihiko was horrible in bed and Shinjiro’s already halfway across the country and in the process of changing his name.

He gets up and throws the sheets off himself before he can wallow in that last possibility too much. Sometimes people just need time. Sometimes people just have the emotional maturity of an adolescent schoolboy. Sometimes—

Sometimes Akihiko is way off the fucking mark, because when he pulls his underwear on and leaves the bedroom, he finds Shinji in the kitchen in nothing but low-slung pajama pants making breakfast. Akihiko’s knees wobble.

“Shit,” Shinjiro says when he sees him. His hair is more disheveled than usual this morning. “You’re not supposed to be up yet.”

It looks like there are eggs in progress on the stove, next to a half-finished plate of sliced fruits. Akihiko smiles weakly. “If I had known that all it would take to get breakfast in bed—”

“Don’t even,” Shinjiro says. “Get back in the bed, asshole.”

This awkward-free banter is making Akihiko brave. His smile slants. “Only if you come too.”

“Soon,” Shinji tells him.

Akihiko happily goes back to bed with that promise trailing after him. Ken doesn’t seem to have poked out of his room yet—possibly terrified of what naked shenanigans might be lurking around the apartment—and Akihiko isn’t in the mood for waking him up, too gleeful to be bothered. There’s a bit of arousal mixed in too.

Shinji still wants this. Wants _him_. Shinji’s in the kitchen right now, scantily clad, making him breakfast after their night of sex. Akihiko’s heart is spinning like it’s just come off a tilt-a-whirl. These are the mornings he’s going to have forever, and he can’t fucking wait.

The thought is just starting to get him fired up to the idea of post-breakfast blowjobs when a text chimes in on his phone where it’s sitting on the nightstand. Akihiko grabs it.

Junpei @ 10:31am: soooo a little birdie told me you and shinjiro-senpai are doing the dirty

There are some other messages from him too, but they consist solely of winking emoticons. Akihiko rolls his eyes.

Akihiko @ 10:33am: Ken?

Junpei @ 10:35am: so is it true?

Junpei @ 10:35am: holy shit. 

Junpei @ 10:36am: we knew it! we all knew it forever!!!!

Junpei @ 10:36am: damn I gotta tell yuka-tan

If Ken’s taken it upon himself to become the town cryer, Akihiko highly doubts that Yukari hasn’t already been informed. And Mitsuru. And Fuuka. And Aigis. And anybody else who’s ever come in breathing distance of Akihiko and might want to hear the juicy news.

Akihiko @ 10:36am: Don't get weird about this.

Junpei @ 10:37am: so how’d it happen? did shinjiro-senpai finally get fed up and just jump you?

Junpei @ 10:37am: did you guys really make out in front of ken?

For Akihiko, this is absolutely getting weird.

Akihiko @ 10:37am: We’re not talking about this.

Akihiko @ 10:38am: Don’t listen to Ken

Junpei @ 10:38am: you guys really did. wow.

Shinji temporarily rescues Akihiko from that conversation by coming into the bedroom with plates in hand, providing a pleasant distraction. In the morning light, Akihiko can really appreciate the body he ravished last night. The muscles in Shinjiro’s bare arms. The sex hair that he still hasn’t straightened out since last night. The scar tissue around his old healed bullet wounds, like small pink fireworks on his chest.

“You feel like eggs?” Shinjiro asks.

Akihiko feels like anything Shinjiro wants to serve him whilst half-naked. He takes the proffered plate, balancing it on his knee as Shinji slips back into the bed with him.

The eggs are good, as everything Shinji makes always is. Akihiko finishes up his plate fast, popping pieces of fruit into his mouth. Their thighs press together all the while. It’s unlike anything they’ve ever done before, but it doesn’t feel strange. If anything, there’s a lingering sense of wishing he could’ve told his past self that this would feel so good and to just get over himself already.

“Can I ask you something?” Akihiko asks when he’s done eating.

Shinjiro grunts through his mouthful of breakfast.

“Last night you said you had wanted this for a while.” He gestures between them to signify _this_. “How long was that?”

Shinji freezes mid-chew. One second later, he resumes, at a glacial pace. When he finally swallows, he says, “I don’t know, Aki. A while.”

Akihiko knows an evasion when he hears one. “Come on. I just want to know.”

Shinjiro shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says again. “I can’t remember ever feeling any different.”

“Wait—what do you mean?”

“It’s always been like that. Like this.” Shinjiro is speaking fixedly to his plate. His voice is gruffer than usual, as if to balance out the sap of the sentiment. “Ever since we were kids, I guess.”

“Seriously?” Akihiko’s world sways a little. “Even—even in the orphanage?”

“Yeah. Always, okay, Aki?”

Shinji’s always wanted him. Always loved him, in effect. Always cared, even when he didn’t know how to express it. Akihiko moves without thinking; he curls his hand around the nape of Shinji’s neck.

“You weren’t ever gonna tell me?”

Shinji finally meets Akihiko’s wild eyes. “‘Course not,” he says. “I just figured—well, I thought that I’d screwed up enough shit for you. I didn’t need to make it worse.”

“Screwed up—Shinji.” Akihiko softens his voice, aware of the delicacy he has to grant his words. “It wasn’t ever like that. Your shit has always been mine too. At least, I’ve always wanted it that way. Don’t you remember how much I fought for you to come back to S.E.E.S.?”

“Yeah. You were annoying as hell.”

He says the words with warmth anyway. It’s a warmth that Akihiko soaks in. In his worst moments, Akihiko was afraid that Shinjiro resented him for his involvement. For urging him to work with the kid whose mother he involuntarily killed. For pushing him back into a team that he wanted to heal from. For not being there for him that night in the alley with Takaya.

Maybe he doesn’t resent Akihiko. Maybe he’s glad that all of Akihiko’s decisions brought the two of them here, like this.

Shinji bumps their knees together. “I’m glad you told me,” he admits.

“You are?”

The insecurity there—one that’ll fade, Akihiko knows, when this isn’t still all so new and blinding—has Shinjiro rolling his eyes. “How many times do I have to say it?”

“Say what?”

“That I love you, asshole,” Shinji says.

Akihiko doesn’t respond, too aware that whatever’s threatening to come out of his mouth will exceed Shinjiro’s tolerance for mushiness. Instead he smiles at his empty plate, the greasy residue of Shinjiro’s homemade breakfast still there. Something he’s always felt around Shinji but is just now starting to recognize as a bone-deep love tickles him.

“Good,” he finally says, and then Shinjiro puts their plates aside on the floor and gives him a reason to stay in bed a little longer.

\--

“Um—Sanada. Akihiko Sanada. I should be on the list.”

Akihiko fixes the cuff of his shirtsleeve while the doorman rifles through his papers. He’s not used to wearing things this formal; compared to his usual outfit, the fabric’s all stiff and the fit is too tight.

Although he imagines he still takes to it better than Shinji.

“Ah,” the doorman says. “Welcome, Sanada-san.” His eyes swivel to Shinjiro. “I don’t see any approved guests, however.”

Shinji, who’s been grumpy ever since he had to put on a suit, seems to have been pushed slightly over the edge by that. “I know Kirijo,” he says, in a rumbly voice that didn’t ever before arouse Akihiko like it does now. “She pulled a few strings for me.”

The doorman purses his lips. “I really don’t think—”

“Give her a call,” Shinji says. “She’ll tell you what you’re lookin’ to hear.”

“Miss Kirijo is extremely busy and rather occupied with the banquet tonight,” the doorman tries to insist.

“Just call her,” Shinjiro interrupts again. “Tell her Akihiko’s plus-one is getting real annoyed with the guy handling the list.”

Shinjiro’s provoking, amazingly enough, seems to work, because the doorman snatches up his phone and dials up Mitsuru immediately.

“Do you really have to antagonize everybody?“ Akihiko mutters, taking care to not make it audible for anyone but Shinji.

“If I have to wear this stupid penguin suit, then yeah,” Shinji replies, defiant as always. “I’m gonna give the guy who thinks I’m gate-crashing a little bit of shit.”

The penguin suit isn’t stupid. As ridiculous as Akihiko knows Shinjiro feels in it—he knows because Shinjiro repeated the sentiment about fifty times in between slipping into the blazer and putting on a tie—Akihiko thinks he looks quite polished. Almost… distractingly so. Certainly a far cry from his usual devotion to strictly casual and comfortable fashion.

Akihiko leans in just enough to gently brush a thumb over Shinjiro’s hipbone. “You look good tonight,” he tells him, quieter than before. “Really good.”

Shinjiro’s eyes go dark. “Yeah? How good?”

Good enough to entertain the idea of a quickie in the bathroom before the banquet starts, Akihiko thinks, but then the doorman is loudly clearing his throat, apparently having finished his phone call.

He doesn’t look extraordinarily pleased. “Kirijo-san has granted you permission to attend,” he says stiffly. “...May I show you to your seats?”

He leads them over to a bedecked table with a long, sweeping tablecloth and a centerpiece that arches high out of its vase. Akihiko’s glad he went for the good suit tonight when he sees it all.

“This is so over the top,” Shinji mutters.

“What did you expect from the Kirijo Group?”

“Senpai!”

Akihiko turns around just in time to see Yukari hurrying over to them in a short pink dress, smile wide. It gets even wider when she sees the hand that’s gently resting on the small of Akihiko’s back.

Akihiko has to admit that it makes him smile a little too when Shinji doesn’t move it away.

“You guys look great,” she says. Her eyes linger longer on Shinji, stuck somewhere between surprise and confusion. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a suit before, Shinjiro-senpai.”

“Yeah, well, commit it to memory, cause it’s gonna be a while until you see me in one again.”

“I actually didn’t know you’d come, Shinjiro-senpai,” she says. “This doesn’t really feel like your sort of thing.”

“It’s not,” Shinjiro answers. “But somebody’s gotta be this guy’s plus-one, and Ken didn’t want to.”

Akihiko doesn’t bother correcting that little tall tale. The truth is, despite his vehement hatred of suits, Shinjiro asked to come. Actually, nagged Akihiko about it until he, in turn, nagged Mitsuru about it, who ultimately relented.

“It’s not like I want to be there,” Shinjiro had said, deceptively cool about it all. “I just think, if everybody’s bringing a plus-one, you should too.”

Akihiko wasn’t sure if it was jealousy, or fear of missing out, or subtle possessiveness, or even just the pride of being Akihiko’s official significant other, for all Kirijo associates to see, but Akihiko was secretly flattered whatever the reason. There was something nice about the idea of having someone’s hand to hold during these things, made all the nicer by it being Shinji’s.

“Right,” Yukari says slowly, obviously buying Shinjiro’s story. She shares a sidelong look with Akihiko. “Well, come on, you guys, let’s go sit down.”

Their table is made up of Yukari and a bunch of suits, all of whom are busily discussing the finetuning of Kirijo marketing. Aigis is there too, any and all suspicious joints well-disguised in a long-sleeved dress.

“Okay, spill it, Senpai,” Yukari needles after the first round of complimentary wine—easily the best part of any Kirijo event—has made its way around the table. “How did the two of you finally get together?”

Akihiko will take that second helping of wine now, thank you. “Hasn’t Junpei already told you all the gory details?”

“He only sent me a few texts.”

“Uh huh,” Shinji says. “And you’re looking for the novel version?”

“I just want to know what happened!” Yukari says. “Especially since we all thought you’d already been together for ages.”

“There’s not much to tell,” Shinji says, somehow still cool as a cucumber. Akihiko is both jealous and annoyed in equal measure at his composure. “Aki just finally realized he’s in love with me. We talked it out. We’re together now.”

“Aww,” Yukari simpers.

“Incorrect,” Aigis adds in.

Shinjiro turns to her. “What?”

“Your timing is inaccurate. Regardless of the official start to your non-platonic relationship, evidence says your feelings have been beyond that of friendship for some time.”

Something about Aigis’ technical, matter-of-fact tone makes the conversation a little bit more embarrassing, like a doctor is reading his feelings for Shinji off his medical chart. Is Aigis honestly saying now that even a somewhat emotionally-stunted robot could pick up on whatever was between him and Shinjiro all this time?

Yukari giggles. “Wait a minute, Aigis. Since when can you read feelings off of people?”

“I can’t,” Aigis says. “But I have a highly reliable source that can.”

“_Who?_”

“Koromaru-san,” Aigis says. “He told me several years ago that Akihiko-san and Shinjiro-san have had strong feelings for each other for a very long time.”

An incredulous sort of hush falls over the table. Akihiko isn’t even quite sure he heard that properly, but then Shinji lets out a poorly contained snicker, one he tries to hide in his fist. Yukari follows suit, laughing louder, until even Akihiko can sort of see the humor in the situation. There is something slightly amusing about being outwitted by a dog. Even if it is an incredibly intelligent dog.

“Well, Aki,” Shinji says, smiling. His hand finds Akihiko’s knee under the table, a soft, reassuring touch. “We can’t argue with Koro-chan.”

Akihiko settles his hand over Shinji’s. For a moment, it feels, insanely, like all of this has been inevitable. He embraces the feeling. “I guess we can’t,” he says, and leans in for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on Twitter under [veterization](https://twitter.com/veterization) and say hi!! ♥


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